Interview with Valegh Faid at LFB Biotechnologies in France
Unique enzymatic digestions in study of antibody disulphides
Valegh Faid and colleagues at LFB Biotechnologies in France have developed and published an assay to study antibody disulphide bonds using middle-up LC-MS (Faid et al., 2017). The combination of FabRICATOR® for digestion below the hinge and FabALACTICA™ for digestion above the hinge, generated three fragments from a human IgG1 antibody; the hinge peptide, Fab and Fc/2 fragments. These fragments were resolved using RP-HPLC and mass spectrometry and enabled analysis of antibody disulphide bridges and other quality attributes.
Interview with Valegh Faid, Scientist at LFB and first author of the paper:
Why are antibody disulphide bonds important?
Disulphide bonds are highly important because of their critical role in the stabilization of protein conformations. Breaking and/or scrambling of disulphide bond occur during manufacturing and storage of biotherapeutics which is a concern in terms of safety and efficacy. The monitoring of these product-derived impurities is mandatory during development operations in order to minimize these forms.
How did you come up with the idea to combine FabRICATOR (IdeS) and FabALACTICA (IgdE)?
We have been using IdeS for many years in order to cleave IgG’s below the hinge; following DTT reduction, more amenable fragments for RP-HPLC/MS analysis are generated as previously published by our laboratory (Chevreux et al., 2011). This middle-up analysis is fast and very informative regarding the protein sequence integrity and post-translational modifications. However, investigating the oxidative state of disulfide bridges is tricky and often involved a time-consuming peptide mapping in non-reducing conditions.
In this context, IgdE is an interesting enzyme that cleaves specifically IgGs above the hinge and without requiring reducing conditions as papain do. The combination of IdeS and IgdE in non-reducing conditions presents the advantage to generate specifically three fragments i.e. hinge, Fc/2 and Fab that are both easily separated by RP-HPLC and analysed by MS.
How does the new enzymatic assay compare to previous methods to study antibody disulphide bonds?
Peptide mapping in non-reducing condition is the gold standard to investigate disulphide bonding of biotherapeutics. However, data interpretation is time consuming even if dedicated software to improve the treatment of data has largely improved. Although being slightly less informative than peptide mapping, this combined IdeS/IgdE middle-up approach increases the throughput for the investigation of free thiols and disulphide scrambling. Considering that other CQAs can also be monitored in the same experiment, it should be more applicable to routine use in process optimization, formulation screening and stability studies.
Would the assay be used in a QC setting relying solely on liquid chromatography separation?
The analytical workflow is robust and requires mere handlings of the antibody samples. Once the identification of each peak of the chromatogram is confirmed by MS, quantitation based on the UV detection is a current practice. Such analytical configuration involving an HPLC and a UV detection is actually common in most of QC labs and thus easily and robustly implementable.
How are you implementing this assay at LFB Biotechnologies?
This assay is integrated in our portfolio of analytical approaches for the analysis of mAbs currently in development, for process optimisation, batch characterization and stability studies.
Read more about FabALACTICA and FabRICATOR.
References: