Radiolabeled bivalent haptens for tumor immunodetection and radioimmunotherapy.

The pretargeting technique referred to as the Affinity Enhancement System (AES) uses bispecific antibodies and radiolabeled bivalent haptens that bind cooperatively to target cells in vivo. Experimental and clinical data demonstrate that DTPA bivalent haptens can deliver large radiation doses to tumor cells with high tumor to normal tissue contrast ratios and long activity residence time in tumors. Preliminary clinical results of radioimmunotherapy of medullary thyroid carcinomas and lung cancers look promising. Very encouraging results in biodistribution and radioimmunotherapy experiments in animals have been obtained with new haptens bearing two histamine-hemisuccinate suitable for 131I, 99mTc and 188Re labeling. Targeting isotopes to double antigen positive tumor cells provides a binding enhancement that increases specificity for tumor cells as compared to single antigen targeting on normal cells. This approach may be beneficial for targeting isotopes to B type acute lymphoblastic leukemia and Burkitt lymphoma, as well as others tumors co-expressing two markers of low specificity, and might increase tumor irradiation with minimal irradiation of normal cells.