Bispecific antibodies in cancer immunotherapy

Cancer immunotherapy has recently generated much excitement after the continuing success of the immunomodulating anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 antibodies against various types of cancers. Aside from these immunomodulating antibodies, bispecific antibodies, chimeric antigen receptor T cells, and other technologies are being actively studied. Among the various approaches to cancer immunotherapy, 2 bispecific antibodies are currently approved for patient care. Many more bispecific antibodies are now in various phases of clinical development and will become the next generation of antibody-based therapies. Further understanding of immunology and advances in protein engineering will help to generate a greater variety of bispecific antibodies to fight cancer. Here, we focus on bispecific antibodies that recruit immune cells to engage and kill tumor cells.