Antibody–Cytokine Fusion Proteins for Cancer Immunotherapy: An Update on Recent Developments

Treatment with cytokines holds great potential for cancer immunotherapy, but is generally restricted by systemic toxicity. Tumor-directed targeting in the form of antibody fusion proteins appears to be an attractive strategy to overcome this problem. In the last twenty years, continuous efforts in developing appropriate molecules have retrieved a variety of antibody fusion proteins that reveal promising therapeutic effects in preclinical studies. Currently, several candidates are in clinical evaluation. Here, recent developments exploring diverse antibody formats, tumor targets and cytokines of different families as well as strategies addressing cytokine modification or presentation are discussed and clinical trials summarized at a glance. Thus, antibody–cytokine fusion proteins are becoming progressively improving immunologic reagents that raise expectations mainly for combinatorial cancer therapies.