% IMPORTANT: The following is UTF-8 encoded. This means that in the presence
% of non-ASCII characters, it will not work with BibTeX 0.99 or older.
% Instead, you should use an up-to-date BibTeX implementation like “bibtex8” or
% “biber”.
@ARTICLE{Klimovich:300329,
author = {B. Klimovich and L. Anton and J. Jung and Y. Lim and B. Lee
and J. Won and L. Zekri and A. Chashchina and M. Pflügler
and J. S. Heitmann and G. Jung and H. Salih$^*$},
title = {{CLEC}12{A}-directed immunocytokine with target
cell-restricted {IL}-15 activity for treatment of acute
myeloid leukemia.},
journal = {Frontiers in immunology},
volume = {16},
issn = {1664-3224},
address = {Lausanne},
publisher = {Frontiers Media},
reportid = {DKFZ-2025-00775},
pages = {1561823},
year = {2025},
abstract = {Despite recent advancements, acute myeloid leukemia (AML)
remains a therapeutic challenge. While monoclonal antibodies
(mAbs) leveraging natural killer (NK) cells through
antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity show great
potential, none have gained clinical approval for AML.
Immunocytokines have emerged as a promising strategy to
overcome the limited efficacy of therapeutic antibodies.
IL-15 stimulates activation, proliferation cytotoxic
activity of NK cells, but its clinical use is prevented by
short half-life, poor accumulation in the tumor, and
toxicity due to systemic off-target immune activation. Here
we report on the generation and preclinical characterization
of modified immunocytokines consisting of an Fc-optimized
CLEC12A (CLL-1) antibody fused to an IL-15 moiety with E46K
mutation. The mutation abrogates binding to IL-15Rα,
thereby enabling substitution of physiological
trans-presentation by target binding and thus conditional
IL-15Rβ/γ stimulation to reduce systemic toxicity. An
optimal CLEC12A binder was selected from a range of murine
mAbs, based on analysis of AML cell lines and leukemic cells
from patients. This antibody was then used to construct an
immunocytokine (MIC12) that subsequently was characterized
functionally. Analysis of NK cell activation, cytokine
release, proliferation and anti-leukemia reactivity
demonstrated that MIC12 induced superior target cell killing
and NK cell expansion compared to Fc-optimized CLEC12A
antibody, with efficacy being dependent on target antigen
binding. Our results show that novel immunocytokines with
conditional IL-15 activity are capable of inducing potent NK
cell responses against AML cells and identify MIC12 as
promising therapeutic candidate for leukemia treatment.},
keywords = {AML (Other) / CLL-1 (Other) / Clec12A (Other) /
Fc-optimized antibodies (Other) / IL-15 (Other) / NK cells
(Other) / immunocytokines (Other)},
cin = {TU01},
ddc = {610},
cid = {I:(DE-He78)TU01-20160331},
pnm = {899 - ohne Topic (POF4-899)},
pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-899},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)16},
pubmed = {pmid:40213559},
pmc = {pmc:PMC11983603},
doi = {10.3389/fimmu.2025.1561823},
url = {https://inrepo02.dkfz.de/record/300329},
}