The in vivo fate of a 211At labelled monoclonal antibody with known specificity in a murine system.

A monoclonal antibody reactive against the human transferrin receptor has been labelled with the alpha and X ray emitting isotope Astatine 211. The labelling procedure does not affect the ability of the product to bind to the transferrin receptor on the human leukemic cell line HL60. Using a direct binding assay, 211At labelled antibody can be specifically inhibited from binding to its target cells by excess unlabelled antibody. Furthermore, the binding inhibition demonstrated in this system correlates to enhanced clonogenic survival of these cells, indicating that very few atoms of 211At/cell are required for cell death. Data obtained from labelled antibody injected into mice show that the labelled product in serum retains the ability to bind to HL60 cells in vitro, although tissue distributions of the injected activity implies that some of the radiolabel is lost from the protein. Despite this loss of label, preliminary experiments on the localization of labelled antibody to HL60 cells growing s/c in nude mice show that tumor tissue has a higher specific activity than all other tissues, other than blood, after 12 hours. This suggests that further work on the nature of label degradation in vivo is warranted in the context of potential therapeutic and diagnostic studies.