Raffaele Colombo, Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Zymeworks, who is also known for his social media activity highlighting ADC research and pitfalls, shared a recent publication on X:
Nice discussion on next generation ADCs…
The paper published in Nature discusses the next generation of antibody–drug conjugates, examining how advances in ADC design, patient selection and clinical development could make these therapies more effective and better tailored to the biology of individual tumors.
ADCs have infiltrated cancer therapeutics in the past few years and are rapidly changing the trajectory of cancer treatment.
The authors discuss strategies that can accelerate ADC development and allow to identify the “best” version of the same ADC being tested in early clinical development.
The next generation of antibody–drug conjugates
Authors: F. Mosele, A. Peltier, Y. Ozaki, A. Detappe, J. C. Soria, F. André
Nature Medicine 03 August 2026
Who are the authors?
Among the senior authors of the study are Fabrice André, Director of Research at Gustave Roussy and the President of ESMO for 2025-2026, Jean-Charles Soria, who has previously served as the Director General of Gustave Roussy and is currently the Senior Vice President and Oncology Therapeutic Area Head of Amgen.
The lead author Maria Fernanda Mosele is a medical oncologist at Gustave Roussy, who’s previous work in ADCs include the phase 2 DAISY trial testing trastuzumab deruxtecan in metastatic breast cancer with variable HER2 expression.
For a recently published article where J. Soria and F. Mosele are co-authors, Soria highlighted a major issue:
We’ve been developing ADCs as targeted drugs. Biology says otherwise.
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Target expression alone poorly predicts benefit
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ADC efficacy emerges from the interaction between tumor cells, TME, payload, linker, and immune biology
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Precision ADCs require multidimensional biomarkers—not better IHC
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Longitudinal biopsies, ctDNA and spatial profiling should become standard in ADC trials
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The next generation of ADCs will be defined as much by patient selection as by molecular engineering.”
Read further on ADCs on OncoDaily:
After TROP2 and HER2, Is B7-H3 the Next Big ADC Target?
