In studies on antitumor antibody-cytotoxic drug conjugates as potential antitumor agents with improved tumor specificity, daunomycin (DM) was first linked to a poly-L-glutamic acid (PLGA) derivative having a single masked thiol group. At the thiol group, DM-linked PLGA was bound to horse anti-rat alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) antibody. The anti-AFP antibody-PLGA-DM conjugate (anti-AFP conjugate, DM/PLGA/Ig molar binding ratio, 7.5/1.2/1.0) retained most of the antigen-binding activity of the parent antibody and was more potent than either unconjugated DM, a conjugate similarity prepared with normal horse immunoglobulin (normal conjugate), or an unconjugated mixture of anti-AFP antibody and DM in an in vitro cytotoxicity assay against the AFP-producing rat ascites hepatoma cell line AH66. Anti-AFP conjugate tended to be less cytotoxic than DM against the AFP-nonproducing rat ascites hepatoma AH272 cells, and in this case there was no difference between the cytotoxicities of anti-AFP conjugate and of normal conjugate.