Preclinical toxicity evaluation of a novel immunotoxin, D2C7-(scdsFv)-PE38KDEL, administered via intracerebral convection-enhanced delivery in rats

D2C7-(scdsFv)-PE38KDEL (D2C7-IT) is a novel immunotoxin that reacts with wild-type epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFRwt) and mutant EGFRvIII proteins overexpressed in glioblastomas. This study assessed the toxicity of intracerebral administration of D2C7-IT to support an initial Food and Drug Administration Investigational New Drug application. After the optimization of the formulation and administration, two cohorts (an acute and chronic cohort necropsied on study days 5 and 34) of Sprague–Dawley (SD) rats (four groups of 5 males and 5 females) were infused with the D2C7-IT formulation at total doses of 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.4 μg (the acute cohort) and 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.35 μg (the chronic cohort) for approximately 72 h by intracerebral convection-enhanced delivery using osmotic pumps. Mortality was observed in the 0.40 μg (5/10 rats) and 0.35 μg (4/10 rats) high-dose groups of each cohort. Body weight loss and abnormal behavior were only revealed in the rats treated with high doses of D2C7-IT. No dose-related effects were observed in clinical laboratory tests in either cohort. A gross pathologic examination of systemic tissues from the high-dose and control groups in both cohorts exhibited no dose-related or drug-related pathologic findings. Brain histopathology revealed the frequent occurrence of dose-related encephalomalacia, edema, and demyelination in the high-dose groups of both cohorts. In this study, the maximum tolerated dose of D2C7-IT was determined to be between 0.10 and 0.35 μg, and the no-observed-adverse-effect-level was 0.05 μg in SD rats. Both parameters were utilized to design the Phase I/II D2C7-IT clinical trial.