Defucosylated Anti-Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Monoclonal Antibody 134-mG 2a -f Exerts Antitumor Activities in Mouse Xenograft Models of Dog Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor-Overexpressed Cells

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a type I transmembrane protein, which is a member of the human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER) family of receptor tyrosine kinases. EGFR is a crucial mediator of cell growth and differentiation and forms homodimers or heterodimers with other HER family members to activate downstream signaling cascades. We previously established an anti-human EGFR (hEGFR) monoclonal antibody (mAb), clone EMab-134 (mouse IgG ), by immunizing mice with the ectodomain of hEGFR. In this study, the subclass of EMab-134 was converted from IgG to IgG (134-mG ) and further defucosylated (134-mG -f) to facilitate antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC). Although 134-mG -f was developed against hEGFR, it was shown to cross-react with dog EGFR (dEGFR) using flow cytometry. The dissociation constant ( ) of 134-mG -f against dEGFR-overexpressed CHO-K1 (CHO/dEGFR) cells was determined by flow cytometry to be 3.3 × 10 M, indicating that 134-mG -f possesses a high binding affinity to dEGFR. Analysis revealed that 134-mG -f contributed to high levels of ADCC and complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) in experiments targeting CHO/dEGFR cells. Furthermore, the administration of 134-mG -f significantly inhibited the development of CHO/dEGFR in comparison with the results observed in response to control mouse IgG. Taken together, the findings of this study demonstrate that 134-mG -f could be useful as part of a therapeutic regimen for dEGFR-expressing canine cancers.