When Patrícia M. Ribeiro Pereira talks about her latest cancer research, she points to a simple idea: why make doctors choose which target to attack when tumors often have more than one?
Ribeiro Pereira, a researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has developed a new way to make existing cancer drugs work harder. Instead of attacking just one type of target on a tumor cell, her technique lets drugs hit two targets at once—dramatically improving how well they shrink tumors in mice.
The approach uses something called click chemistry. Think of it like molecular LEGO: Ribeiro Pereira splits the drug into separate pieces that travel through the bloodstream on their own, then snaps them together once they reach the tumor. This modular system lets her combine two different antibodies—proteins that seek out cancer cells—whereas current drugs can only carry one.
"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," Ribeiro Pereira said.
In the study, published in the journal Nature, Ribeiro Pereira and her team tested the approach on mice with pancreatic, gastric, and breast cancers. They used antibodies already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for cancer treatment—one targeting the EGFR receptor, another targeting HER2. Both receptors control how tumors grow, but existing drugs lock onto just one or the other.
The researchers gave the mice one antibody first, then followed up about a day later with a second. Because both pieces carried half of a special click molecule, they snapped together once they found the tumor. The result: the treatment hit more cancer targets and shrank tumors more effectively than standard antibody-drug conjugates.
Antibody-drug conjugates are a newer class of cancer medication, first approved around 2011. Today, 15 such drugs exist for leukemia and lung, cervical, and breast cancers. They work by attaching a tumor-killing drug to an antibody that seeks out cancer cells, reducing harm to healthy tissue. But their precision is also their limitation—because each drug carries only one type of antibody, they struggle against tumors packed with different cell types.
"There is a lot of excitement here because we have shown that it isn't necessary to create a whole new drug platform for each therapeutic target," Ribeiro Pereira added. "We can repurpose antibodies that already exist to improve treatments."
The implications could be significant. Rather than spending years and billions developing entirely new drugs, researchers might be able to combine existing treatments in smarter ways. The technique also opens the door to mixing and matching antibodies depending on what targets a patient's specific tumor contains.
The work is still in early stages—it has only been tested in mice so far. But if the results hold up in future studies, this modular approach could make cancer treatments more flexible and more powerful, one click at a time.