Lectures and seminars OnkPat Friday Seminar: Drug conjugates targeting HER2 based on engineered affibody molecules for cancer therapy

Host: Kasper Karlsson, Department of Oncology-Pathology

Abstract

Affibody molecules are small, engineered scaffold affinity proteins that can be site-specifically loaded with cytotoxic drugs, producing homogenous conjugates with a desired drug-to-affibody ratio. The presentation will focus on targeting HER2 with affibody-based drug conjugates. It will describe how variations in the type of cytotoxic payload, both tubulin and topoisomerase inhibitors, as well as the drug load per affibody, influence biodistribution and in vivo cytotoxic efficacy in preclinical models. 

Biography

Professor Torbjörn Gräslund holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, since 2001. Following two years of post-doctoral training with Professor Carlos Barbas at the Scripps Research Institute, he has been a principal investigator at the Department of Protein Science at KTH since 2003. His main research focus is on designing proteins for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, with a particular focus on oncology and autoimmune diseases. Dr. Gräslund is the inventor of several patents in the field.