Phase I program will evaluate an affinity-tunable antibody-drug conjugate for high-grade serous ovarian cancer
LOS ANGELES, CA — September 10, 2026 — Mabswitch Inc (Mabswitch) today announced that it has received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to advance the company’s SMART-ADC™ platform.
The funded project, “Affinity-tunable Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) against High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer,” will develop and evaluate a next-generation ADC designed to provide temporal and spatial control over target engagement.
Despite major advances in ADC targets, payloads, linkers and conjugation technologies, target engagement remains largely fixed once an ADC is administered. High-affinity binding can promote tumor retention and internalization, but can also contribute to the binding-site barrier, normal-tissue engagement and restricted intratumoral distribution. These competing requirements create a fundamental challenge since properties that favor distribution and selectivity may not be the same properties that favor productive target engagement and payload delivery.
Mabswitch’s SMART-ADC™, or Selective Modulation of ADC Tumor Targeting, is designed to separate these functions. The platform enables an ADC to initially operate in a lower-affinity OFF state intended to favor distribution and reduce unwanted target engagement, followed by a ligand-triggered transition to a higher-avidity ON state designed to promote tumor engagement, internalization and payload delivery.
The NCI-funded Phase I program will test this concept in high-grade serous ovarian cancer through biochemical, cellular and in vivo studies, establishing proof of concept for programmable target engagement as a potential new control layer in ADC design.
“Current ADCs are remarkably sophisticated medicines, but once administered their target-binding properties are essentially fixed,” said Dr. Yemi Onakunle, Founder and CEO of Mabswitch. “Our goal is to introduce a different paradigm in which target engagement can be regulated within the patient. This award provides us with the opportunity to rigorously test whether that additional level of control can help address some of the fundamental limitations of ADC therapy.”
SMART-ADC is one application of Mabswitch’s ligand-programmable antibody technology. The company is exploring the broader application of programmable target engagement across ADCs, T-cell engagers and other antibody-based therapeutics.
About Mabswitch
Mabswitch is developing ligand-programmable antibody therapeutics designed to provide dynamic control over biological activity after administration. The company is applying its programmable antibody platforms to next-generation oncology therapeutics with the goal of expanding therapeutic windows and enabling new approaches to drug design.
Funding Acknowledgment
Research reported in this publication is supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R43CA314526. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
