Generation of single-chain bispecific green fluorescent protein fusion antibodies for imaging of antibody-induced T cell synapses

Abstract

There is growing interest in the development of novel single-chain bispecific antibodies for retargeting of immune effector T cells to tumor cells. Until today, functional fusion constructs consisting of a single-chain bispecific antibody and a fluorescent protein were not reported. Such molecules could be useful for an in vivo visualization of this retargeting process. Recently, we established two novel single-chain bispecific antibodies. One is capable of retargeting T cells to CD33, and the other is capable of retargeting T cells to the prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA). CD33 is an attractive immunotarget on the surface of tumor cells from patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The PSCA is a potential target on prostate cancer cells. Flanking the reading frame encoding the green fluorescent protein (GFP) with a recently described novel helical linker element allowed us to establish novel single-chain bispecific fusion antibodies. These fluorescent fusion antibodies were useful to efficiently retarget T cells to the respective tumor cells and visualize the formation of immune synapses between effector and target cells.