An Industry Perspective on Forced Degradation Studies of Biopharmaceuticals: Survey Outcome and Recommendations.

The BioPhorum Development Group is an industry-wide consortium enabling networking and sharing of common practices for the development of biopharmaceuticals. Forced degradation studies (FDSs) are often used in biotherapeutic development to assess criticality of quality attributes and in comparability studies to ensure product manufacturing process consistency. To gain an understanding of current industry approaches for FDS, the BioPhorum Development Group-Forced Degradation Point Share group conducted an intercompany collaboration exercise, which included a benchmarking survey and group discussions around FDS of monoclonal antibodies. The results of this industry collaboration provide insights into the practicalities of these characterization studies and how they are being used to support the product lifecycle from innovation to marketed products. The survey requested feedback on the intended purpose, materials, conditions, number and length of time points used, and analytical techniques carried out to give a complete picture of the range of common industry practices. This article discusses the results of this global benchmarking survey across 12 companies and presents these as a guide to a common approach to FDS across the industry which can be used to guide the design of FDS based on chemistry and manufacturing control product life-cycle and biomolecule needs.

Identification and characterization of co-purifying CHO host cell proteins in monoclonal antibody purification process.

Host cell proteins (HCPs) are process-related impurities derived from the host organism such as Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells used for the production of therapeutic mAbs in biopharmaceuticals and potentially pose a risk to patient safety and product efficacy. A number of HCPs have been reported as exceptionally difficult to remove and persist across downstream purification operations into final drug product because they exhibit association with mAbs. Therefore, understanding of HCP impurities and the mAb itself will provide insights into the rational design of efficient downstream process. The aim of this work is to understand mAb interaction with HCPs and identify co-purified HCP subpopulations using two different approaches: (1) Incubation of purified mAb with harvest cell culture fluid (HCCF) from mock-transfected CHO cells (null HCCF) or (2) Immobilization of mAb onto chromatography media followed by incubation with null HCCF. CHO HCP ELISA was used to semi-quantitatively measure the levels of total HCPs. Orthogonal techniques including 2-DE and LC-MS/MS were applied to detect variations in CHO HCP profiles and species. The HCP contents in protein A product pools were significantly higher compared to that in control sample without mAb spiked in and variable HCP levels shown in three different protein A product pools. The majority of HCPs identified by LC-MS/MS in the three protein A product pool showed overlap with the HCP identified in eluate pools from the column immobilized with three different mAbs. The interacting HCPs associated with mAbs were largely involved in catalytic activity. Both approaches demonstrated mAbs bind a common set of HCPs as well as HCPs unique to the mAb.

The impact of trisulfide modification of antibodies on the properties of antibody-drug conjugates manufactured using thiol chemistry.

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are promising biotherapeutic agents for the treatment of cancer. The careful monitoring of critical quality attributes is important for ADCs' development, manufacturing and production. In this work, the effect of the presence of a trisulfide bond in the monoclonal antibody (mAb) conjugated to DM4 cytotoxic payload through a disulfide-bond linker sulfo-SPDB (sSPDB) was investigated. Three lots of antibody containing variable levels of trisulfide bonds were used. The identity and levels of trisulfide bonds were determined by liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometry (MS)/MS analysis. The antibodies were conjugated to sSPDB-DM4 to generate ADCs. Further analysis indicated that the drug-to-antibody ratio (DAR) value, a critical quality attribute, slightly increased for the conjugates made from antibody containing higher levels of trisulfide bond. Also, higher fragmentation levels were observed in the conjugates with more trisulfide bond. Detailed characterization by MS revealed that a small amount of DM4 payload was directly attached to inter-chain cysteine residues by disulfide or trisulfide bonds. Overall, our investigation indicated that the trisulfide bond present in the mAb could react with DM4 during the conjugation process. Therefore, the presence of trisulfide bonds in the antibody moiety should be carefully monitored and well controlled during the development of a maytansinoid ADC.

Statistics of the distribution of the abundance of molecules with various drug loads in maytansinoid antibody-drug conjugates.

The maytansinoid antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) in clinical development for cancer therapy each contain a derivative of the microtubule-targeting agent, maytansine, covalently attached to the antibody via an engineered linker. A sample of any of these conjugates contains molecules with different numbers of maytansinoid molecules, or "drug" loads, the relative abundance of which can be determined by mass spectrometry. We examined the accuracy of the Poisson distribution and the binomial distribution in predicting the relative abundance of species with different drug loads for three antibody-maytansinoid conjugates with different antibodies and linker-maytansinoid pairings. We used variance, calculated from the experimental mass distribution data, as the parameter to determine the optimal value n of the binomial distribution number of trials. The accuracy of the Poisson distribution in predicting distribution of the species abundance in these conjugates varied among the conjugates. In contrast, the accuracy of the binomial distribution was similar for all three conjugates and comparable to the best accuracy of the Poisson distribution, as supported by a paired t-test.

Exploring the glycoproteomics landscape with advanced MS technologies.

The advance of glycoproteomic technologies has offered unique insights into the importance of glycosylation in determining the functional roles of a protein within a cell. Biologically active glycoproteins include the categories of enzymes, hormones, proteins involved in cell proliferation, cell membrane proteins involved in cell-cell recognition, and communication events or secreted proteins, just to name a few. The recent progress in analytical instrumentation, methodologies, and computational approaches has enabled a detailed exploration of glycan structure, connectivity, and heterogeneity, underscoring the staggering complexity of the glycome repertoire in a cell. A variety of approaches involving the use of spectroscopy, MS, separation, microfluidic, and microarray technologies have been used alone or in combination to tackle the glycoproteome challenge, the research results of these efforts being captured in an overwhelming number of annual publications. This work is aimed at reviewing the major developments and accomplishments in the field of glycoproteomics, with focus on the most recent advancements (2012-2014) that involve the use of capillary separations and MS detection.

Determination of charge heterogeneity and level of unconjugated antibody by imaged cIEF.

Imaged capillary isoelectric focusing (icIEF) is capable of monitoring the charge heterogeneity profile of conjugated antibodies. The electropherogram from icIEF can be integrated to quantitate the amount of unconjugated antibody present in a conjugate sample. This chapter describes an icIEF method where a conjugate sample was first prepared by mixing with appropriate ampholytes, pI markers, and additives. Then, the sample was focused in a fluorocarbon-coated fused silica capillary, where absorbance images were taken. Quantitation of the unconjugated antibody was achieved by using a calibration curve.

Glycoproteomics on the rise: established methods, advanced techniques, sophisticated biological applications.

Glycosylation is the most complex form of protein PTMs. Affected proteins may carry dozens of glycosylation sites with tens to hundreds of glycan residues attached to every site. Glycosylated proteins have many important functions in biology, from cellular to organismal levels, being involved in cell-cell signaling, cell adhesion, immune response, host-pathogen interactions, and development and growth. Glycosylation, however, expands the biological functional diversity of proteins at the expense of a tremendous increase in structural heterogeneity. Aberrant glycosylation of cell surface proteins, as well as their detectable fingerprint in plasma samples, has been associated with cancer, inflammatory and degenerative diseases, and congenital disorders of glycosylation. Therefore, there are on-going efforts directed toward developing new technologies and approaches for glycan sequencing and high-throughput analysis of glycosylated proteins in complex samples with simultaneous characterization of both the protein and glycan moieties. This work is aimed primarily at pinpointing the challenges associated with the large-scale analysis of glycoproteins and the latest developments in glycoproteomic research, with focus on recent advancements (2011-2012) in microcolumn separations and MS detection.

Synthesis and evaluation of hydrophilic linkers for antibody-maytansinoid conjugates.

The synthesis and biological evaluation of hydrophilic heterobifunctional cross-linkers for conjugation of antibodies with highly cytotoxic agents are described. These linkers contain either a negatively charged sulfonate group or a hydrophilic, noncharged PEG group in addition to an amine-reactive N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) ester and sulfhydryl reactive termini. These hydrophilic linkers enable conjugation of hydrophobic organic molecule drugs, such as a maytansinoid, at a higher drug/antibody ratio (DAR) than hydrophobic SPDB and SMCC linkers used earlier without triggering aggregation or loss of affinity of the resulting conjugate. Antibody-maytansinoid conjugates (AMCs) bearing these sulfonate- or PEG-containing hydrophilic linkers were, depending on the nature of the targeted cells, equally to more cytotoxic to antigen-positive cells and equally to less cytotoxic to antigen-negative cells than conjugates made with SPDB or SMCC linkers and thus typically displayed a wider selectivity window, particularly against multidrug resistant (MDR) cancer cell lines in vitro and tumor xenograft models in vivo.

Recent advances in the MS analysis of glycoproteins: Theoretical considerations.

Protein glycosylation is involved in a broad range of biological processes that regulate protein function and control cell fate. As aberrant glycosylation has been found to be implicated in numerous diseases, the study and large-scale characterization of protein glycosylation is of great interest not only to the biological and biomedical research community, but also to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Due to the complex chemical structure and differing chemical properties of the protein/peptide and glycan moieties, the analysis and structural characterization of glycoproteins has been proven to be a difficult task. Large-scale endeavors have been further limited by the dynamic outcome of the glycosylation process itself, and, occasionally, by the low abundance of glycoproteins in biological samples. Recent advances in MS instrumentation and progress in miniaturized technologies for sample handling, enrichment and separation, have resulted in robust and compelling analysis strategies that effectively address the challenges of the glycoproteome. This review summarizes the key steps that are involved in the development of efficient glycoproteomic analysis methods, and the latest innovations that led to successful strategies for the characterization of glycoproteins and their corresponding glycans. As a follow-up to this work, we review innovative capillary and microfluidic-MS workflows for the identification, sequencing and characterization of glycoconjugates.

Recent advances in the MS analysis of glycoproteins: Capillary and microfluidic workflows.

Recent developments in bioanalytical instrumentation, MS detection, and computational data analysis approaches have provided researchers with capabilities for interrogating the complex cellular glycoproteome, to help gain a better insight into the cellular and physiological processes that are associated with a disease and to facilitate the efforts centered on identifying disease-specific biomarkers. This review describes the progress achieved in the characterization of protein glycosylation by using advanced capillary and microfluidic MS technologies. The major steps involved in large-scale glycoproteomic analysis approaches are discussed, with special emphasis given to workflows that have evolved around complex MS detection functions. In addition, quantitative analysis strategies are assessed, and the bioinformatics aspects of glycoproteomic data processing are summarized. The developments in commercial and custom fabricated microfluidic front-end platforms to ESI- and MALDI-MS instrumentation, for addressing major challenges in carbohydrate analysis such as sensitivity, throughput, and ability to perform structural characterization, are further evaluated and illustrated with relevant examples.

Analysis of the composition of immunoconjugates using size-exclusion chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry.

Recombinant monoclonal antibody drug products play an increasingly important role in the treatment of various diseases. Antibodies are large, multi-chain proteins and antibody preparations often contain several molecular variants, which renders them heterogeneous. The heterogeneity is further increased in immunoconjugates prepared by covalently linking several drug molecules per antibody molecule. As part of the product characterization, the molecular weights of the antibodies or their drug conjugates need to be measured. Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) is well suited for the analysis of recombinant antibodies and immunoconjugates. Sample preparation is an important element of ESI-MS analysis, in particular samples need to be freed of interfering charged species, such as salts and buffer components. In this paper, Amicon centrifugal filters, reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and size-exclusion HPLC were evaluated for sample desalting. Size-exclusion HPLC, using aqueous acetonitrile as the mobile phase, directly coupled to ESI-MS provided the best performance and was optimized for the study of immunoconjugates. The results showed that antibodies carrying covalently linked maytansinoid molecules generated charge envelope profiles that differ from those of the non-conjugated antibody. For the determination of the distribution of the various conjugate species in an immunoconjugate sample prepared by randomly linking in the average 3.6 drug molecules per antibody molecule, the experimental conditions needed to be carefully selected to allow acquisition of the whole spectrum containing the charge envelopes of all species.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry for the evaluation of the C-terminal lysine distribution of a recombinant monoclonal antibody.

Recombinant monoclonal antibodies produced using mammalian cell lines contain multiple chemical modifications. One specific modification resides on the C-terminus of the heavy chain. Enzymes inside the cell can cleave the C-terminal lysine from the heavy-chain molecules, and variants with and without C-terminal lysine can be produced. In order to fully characterize the protein, there is a need for analytical methods that are able to account for the different product variants. Conventional analytical methods used for the measurement of the distribution of the two different variants are based on chemical or enzymatic degradation of the protein followed by chromatographic separation of the degradation products. Chromatographic separations with gradient elution have long run times, and analyses of multiple samples are time-consuming. This paper reports development of a novel method for the determination of the relative amounts of the two C-terminal heavy-chain variants based on matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOFMS) measurements of the cyanogen bromide degraded recombinant monoclonal antibody products. The distribution of the variants is determined from the MALDI-TOF mass spectra by measuring the peak areas of the two C-terminal peptides. The assay was used for the assessment of the C-terminal lysine distribution in different development lots. The method was able to differentiate between the products obtained using the same cell line as well as between products obtained from different cell lines.