The nomenclature used to describe animals working in roles supporting people can be confusing. The same term may be used to describe different roles, or two terms may mean the same thing. This confusion is evident among researchers, practitioners, and end users. Because certain animal roles are provided with legal protections and/or government-funding support in some jurisdictions, it is necessary to clearly define the existing terms to avoid confusion. The aim of this paper is to provide operationalized definitions for nine terms, which would be useful in many world regions: “assistance animal”, “companion animal”, “educational/school support animal”, “emotional support animal”, “facility animal”, “service animal”, “skilled companion animal”, “therapy animal”, and “visiting/visitation animal”. At the International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ) conferences in 2018 and 2020, over 100 delegates participated in workshops to define these terms, many of whom co-authored this paper. Through an iterative process, we have defined the nine terms and explained how they differ from each other. We recommend phasing out two terms (i.e., “skilled companion animal” and “service animal”) due to overlap with other terms that could potentially exacerbate confusion. The implications for several regions of the world are discussed.

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Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) have failed to deliver the successes seen in breast and urological tumours in Gastro-intestinal tumours such as stomach, colorectal and pancreatic due to 3 critical limitations: Low potency, ineffective solid-tumour penetration and poor tolerability. Approaches utilizing full-length Immunoglobulins dominate the industry, however, antibody fragments (e.g. single-chain Fvs-scFvs), which have many advantages including rapid tumour penetration, faster clearance, inexpensive manufacture, have been technologically challenging to apply in oncology. Our novel approach enables scFvs to have a high Drug:Antibody loading ratio (DAR) whilst retaining effective binding and other favourable biophysical properties, leading to a new product class tailored for solid tumours. Antikor has two FDC products in development for solid tumours, notably gastric: anti-HER2 FDC (ANT-043) and a second target (ANT-045, to be disclosed). ANT-043 has pM potencies in a range of HER2-expressing cell-lines, including trastuzumab-resistant models, excellent tumour ablation effects in breast, ovarian and gastric cancer xenograft models and superior tolerability compared to an ADC in rat toxicology studies at a dose of 1mg/kg/weekly. Quantitative payload tumour uptake and fluorescent immuno-histological studies demonstrate superior solid tumour penetration across the entire tumour and diffusion from blood vessels. In collaboration with our partners, Essex Biotechnology PLC, Antikor is taking ANT-043 into development. ANT-045, which emerged from Antikor’s proprietary FDC ‘discovery engine’, is progressing towards IND-filing and updated data will illustrate how ANT-045 could have a broader patient benefit in gastro-intestinal cancers. ANT-045 has excellent in vitro cell-kill potency (pM IC50s) and excellent stability and superior in vivo tumour cure efficacy, compared to a leading clinical stage benchmark ADC. This presentation will focus on Antikor’s FDC discovery platform (stable high-DAR scFv-display libraries, tailored linker-payloads and design features) that has the potential to generate first-in-class products for difficult to treat solid tumours for patient benefit and promising to succeed where ADCs have failed to make an impact. Citation Format: Mahendra P. Deonarain, Gokhan Yahioglu, Ioanna Stamati, Soraya Diez-Posada, Bryan Edwards, Anja Pomowski, Isabel Perez-Castro, Sam Ness, Laura Bouche, Jeaniffer Yap, Howard Desmond, Lowri Davies, Malcolm Ngiam, Quinn Xue. Gastric cancerantibody fragment drug-conjugates (FDCs): Applying a successful concept to solid tumours [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 1530.

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