Boosting anti-cancer immunotherapy using pH-switchable reagents

Cancer cells tend to acidify their immediate microenvironment due to increased consumption of glucose at limiting oxygen conditions. These unique biophysical properties could be utilized to achieve differential recognition of antigens using the same therapeutic mAbs. Thus, incorporating pH-switchable recognition elements into therapeutic antibodies could result with the desired differential recognition. This would allow increasing the dose of the mAbs to maximize the therapeutic effect while reducing the severity of, or completely eliminate the off-target side effects.