RESUMO
An increasing number of bispecific therapeutic antibodies are progressing through clinical development. The Knob-into-Hole (KiH) technology uses complementary mutations in the CH3 region of the antibody Fc fragment to achieve heavy chain heterodimerization. Here we describe the X-ray crystal structures of glycosylated and disulfide-engineered heterodimeric KiH Fc fragment and its homodimeric Knob-Knob and Hole-Hole side products. The heterodimer structure confirms the KiH design principle and supports the hypothesis that glycosylation stabilizes a closed Fc conformation. Both homodimer structures show parallel Fc fragment architectures, in contrast to recently reported crystal structures of the corresponding aglycosylated Fc fragments which in the absence of disulfide mutations show an unexpected antiparallel arrangement. The glycosylated Knob-Knob Fc fragment is destabilized as indicated by variability in the relative orientation of its CH3 domains. The glycosylated Hole-Hole Fc fragment shows an unexpected intermolecular disulfide bond via the introduced Y349C Hole mutation which results in a large CH3 domain shift and a new CH3-CH3 interface. The crystal structures of glycosylated, disulfide-linked KiH Fc fragment and its Knob-Knob and Hole-Hole side products reported here will facilitate further design of highly efficient antibody heterodimerization strategies.
Assuntos
Anticorpos Biespecíficos/química , Fragmentos Fc das Imunoglobulinas/química , Imunoglobulina G/química , Engenharia de Proteínas , Motivos de Aminoácidos , Anticorpos Biespecíficos/genética , Anticorpos Biespecíficos/metabolismo , Sítios de Ligação , Cristalografia por Raios X , Dissulfetos/química , Expressão Gênica , Vetores Genéticos/química , Vetores Genéticos/metabolismo , Glicosilação , Células HEK293 , Humanos , Fragmentos Fc das Imunoglobulinas/genética , Fragmentos Fc das Imunoglobulinas/metabolismo , Imunoglobulina G/genética , Imunoglobulina G/metabolismo , Modelos Moleculares , Mutação , Ligação Proteica , Conformação Proteica em alfa-Hélice , Conformação Proteica em Folha beta , Domínios e Motivos de Interação entre Proteínas , Multimerização Proteica , Estabilidade Proteica , Proteínas Recombinantes/química , Proteínas Recombinantes/genética , Proteínas Recombinantes/metabolismoRESUMO
Site-directed mutagenesis was used to determine the efficacy of changing surface residues to improve crystal quality. Nine mutants of the 24 kDa fragment of the Escherichia coli DNA gyrase B subunit were produced, changing residues on the protein's surface. The mutations changed either the charge or the polarity of the wild-type amino acid. It was found that single amino-acid changes on the surface could have a dramatic effect on the crystallization properties of the protein and generally resulted in an improvement in the number of crystal-screen hits as well as an improvement in crystal quality. It is concluded that crystal engineering is a valuable tool for protein crystallography.