New anti-tumor tech

Shape-shifting drug hits tumors in multiple ways, improves outcomes in mice

July 15, 2026
7:39 pm

Modern anticancer medications that combine tumor-fighting drugs with proteins that specifically target cancer cells are a relatively new class of drugs, often given to patients for whom standard chemotherapy has not worked. The drugs are precise but can attack only one type of target in a cancer cell at a time. This limits their effectiveness against tumors containing multiple types of targets, which becomes more likely as cancer progresses or tumors become resistant to conventional therapies.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown in mice that it is possible to increase the potential effectiveness of these drugs, known as antibody-drug conjugates. By modifying drugs already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration so they self-assemble in the body and attack more than one cancer target, the researchers dramatically improved the medications’ effectiveness.

The study was published in Nature.

“We’ve shown that when two cancer-targeting antibodies bind together inside the body, they accumulate at the tumor more effectively and improve treatment response,” said Patrícia M. Ribeiro Pereira, Ph.D., an assistant professor of radiology at WashU Medicine Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology and a research member of Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine.

Shape-shifting drug hits tumors in multiple ways, improves outcomes in mice

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