UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Magazine Winter 2018 | Page 19

First in humans
LoBuglio: “We were in the vanguard looking
at use of monoclonals in humans. There had
been no mouse monoclonal studies in humans,
except small, individual studies in Europe. Our
group did the first mouse monoclonal antibody
study in the United States with a formal
protocol. There had been considerable expertise
at UAB in basic immunology. We added a
radioisotope labeling person, and a physician
to lead the trials and lab people who could do
correlative studies.”
Mansoor Saleh. Photo courtesy UAB Archives.
Andres Forero, M.D., trained as a fellow with
LoBuglio in the 1980s, and has spent much of his
career at UAB. He is now a senior scientist and
director of the Breast Cancer Program at the UAB
Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Andres Forero: “Dr. LoBuglio was one of the
first people who saw the future of monoclonal
antibodies. Thirty years ago, there were two
ways to go in cutting-edge cancer research:
one was vaccines, and the other was Mabs.
One of the nice things about Dr. LoBuglio
is that he was interested in both and worked
in both areas. Vaccines, unfortunately, have
failed dramatically. Not a single one is available
today. But the Mab pathway has become one of
the most successful stories in the treatment of
cancer.”
Saleh: “There was a company that made
antibodies against a target that seemed to be
prevalent on tumor cells. They were not tumor-
specific, because those targets were also on
normal cells, but we had to at least give it a try.
We were able to show that, yes, a patient can
receive a mouse Mab targeting the tumor. But
the half-life of the mouse antibody was very
short — a few hours.
“We could give one dose with no problem. By
the second dose, the patient had already made
an immune response to the mouse, so by the
time you gave the third dose it was destroyed
very quickly. You really couldn’t use this for
therapeutic purposes, although you could use it
for imaging.”
LoBuglio: “Our paper said that mouse
monoclonal antibodies were impractical, and
defined regions that produced the immune
response and said that was the area we had to
get rid of. So in collaboration with a company
called Centocor, we developed a genetically
engineered monoclonal antibody that was part
mouse and part human.”
# K N O W U A B C C C
•
“We did the
first trial in a
human and it
worked well.
Our conclusion
was that these
genetically
engineered
antibodies
were what had
to be used for
efficacy.”
Alber t LoBuglio, M.D.
U A B . E D U / C A N C E R
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