Molecular targeting of CEACAM6 using antibody probes of different sizes

Carcinocinoembryonic antigen-related cell adhesion molecule 6 (CEACAM6) is overexpressed in a number of human malignancies, especially in pancreatic cancer. It has been demonstrated that CEACAM6 is a potential target for monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy with a safe therapeutic index. Here, we labeled three anti-CEACAM6 antibodies of different sizes, including a single-domain antibody 2A3 (16 kDa), a heavy chain antibody 2A3-mFc (80 kDa) and a full length antibody 9A6 (150 kDa), with 64 Cu to image CEACAM6 expression in a xenografted pancreatic tumor model. For positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, the tumor mice were intravenously injected with 64 Cu-DOTA-antibodies and static scans were obtained at 5 min, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8 and 24 h post-injection (p.i.). All three antibodies showed strong CEACAM6 binding. Ex vivo immunostaining on tumor sections at 24 h after Ab injection demonstrated specific tumor targeting of both 2A3-mFc and 9A6. 64 Cu-DOTA-2A3 showed fast BxPC3 tumor uptake and rapid whole-body clearance. At 24 h p.i., the tumor uptakes were 98.2 ± 6.12%ID/g for 64 Cu-DOTA-2A3-mFc and 57.8 ± 3.73%ID/g for 64 Cu-DOTA-9A6, respectively. Compared with the full length antibody 9A6, the heavy chain antibody 2A3-mFc showed higher tumor uptake, lower liver uptake and shorter circulation half-life. All the data supported that the heavy chain antibody 2A3-mFc is superior to the single domain antibody and the full-length antibody with regard to tumor detection and pharmacokinetics, which has great potential to be developed for CEACAM6-targeted pancreatic cancer imaging and therapy.