From the Spy who Loved me, Carly Simon sang what is, bar none, in our humble opinion, the greatest James Bond theme song ever composed, “Nobody Does It Better”.
Change the opening stanza from “better” to “TGF-beta” and it describes not 007 but 001, as in AdAPT-001:
Nobody does it TGF-beta
Makes me feel sad for the rest
Nobody does it half as good as you
Baby, you’re the best
The TGF-β trap enhanced oncolytic adenovirus, AdAPT-001, is still experimental, which means that claims about efficacy are verboten, and so we will be careful not to make them, directly or indirectly, even though the virus has stirred up a lot of excitement for its activity against soft tissue sarcomas plus/minus a checkpoint inhibitor in a Phase 2 clinical trial.
However, here’s what we can claim without hesitation: AdAPT-001 is the only oncolytic virus to carry a TGF-β trap, which binds to and inhibits the protein, TGF-β, that tumors overproduce to escape destruction by the host immune system. This is relevant and important because many of the genes that current oncolytic viruses carry to activate the immune system like granulocyte-monocyte stimulating factor (GM-CSF) GM-CSF and interleukin-12 (IL-12) are redundant in the sense that viral infection already drives a surge of inflammatory cytokines like GM-CSF, and IL-12.
Which makes the TGF-β trap in AdAPT-001 one-of-a-kind.
Now it may seem like shameless self-aggrandizement to make iconic James Bond lyrics all about AdAPT-001.
🙋♂️
Carly Simon also wrote a song about that. It’s called, “You’re so vain”.