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The use of IgG-based antibodies in various clinical fields have increased over that past decades, continuing the development of better biopharmaceuticals. The use of other immunoglobulins including IgA, characterized with the ability to recruit effector cells, is progressively being considered a useful alternative. The complexity of the heavily glycosylated IgA does however pose analytical challenges…
Super resolution microscopy techniques such as stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED) improves imaging resolution compared to conventional light microscopy. In STED microscopy, super resolution is achieved using photoactivatable dyes that are excited and de-excited selectively with a laser to restrict fluorescense to a specific focal point. While such super resolution methods in combination with immunostaining…
Charge heterogeneity of monoclonal antibodies is an important critical quality attribute that requires close monitoring due to its potential impact on antibody efficacy and immunogenicity. Since the heterogeneity is mostly caused by post translational modifications such as C-terminal lysine clipping, deamidation, glycation, sialic acid or adduct formation, these modifications can pose significant challenges to the…
Genovis launches new GlyCLICK kits for site-specific generation of custom ADCs carrying unique 2-step cleavable linker-payloads from Glykos Finland. Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) comprise a new generation of antibody-based biologics that carry drug payloads directly into target cells, allowing for a broadened therapeutic window. The drawbacks of conventional antibody conjugation strategies are rapidly being surpassed by…
Antibodies formulated as solid-state depots can potentially be used for local treatments and minimize the need for large systemic doses. Bevacizumab may for instance be administered locally to control post-operative scarring following glaucoma filtration surgery. A solid-state form would however be required in order to obtain a proper slow release of the antibody.
The formulation of antibodies in mixtures has revealed significant clinical advantages but causes increased analytical challenges. Long-term studies of formulated antibody mixtures over time are both difficult and time consuming. An example of a post-translational modification that could occur during storage is the oxidation of tyrosine that may induce conformational changes of an antibody.
Two complementary determining regions (CDR3) are considered major determinants of antigen-binding specificity that give rise to the human immunoglobulin repertoire with billions of unique antibodies. For de novo sequencing of the human repertoire, circulating antibodies can be analyzed by mass spectrometry after proteolytic cleavage. Complex mixtures such as plasma derived samples are however challenging to…
In contrast to small generic molecules, therapuetic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) exhibit inherent heterogeneity that may arise during production and formulation or due to the storage conditions. Therefore, it is essential to characterize the structural heterogeneity of mAbs with respect to properties including conformational changes, aggregation and post-translational modifications. In this work, Zhu et al. at…
Important advances in top-down and middle-level analytical LC-MS strategies have arisen in recent years, focused on the characterization of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. Similar strategies to analyze polyclonal IgG in regard to subclass abundance and glycosylation patterns may provide new insight into immune regulatory processes. However, challenges associated with molecular heterogeneity due to inherent sequence variability…
The O-glycoprotease OpeRATOR® from Genovis has spurred great interest from the community and has become a valuable tool for characterizing O-glycosylated biopharmaceuticals. Through a collaboration with the lab of Marcelo Guerin, the structure of OpeRATOR has now been solved and published in Nature Communications.
Scientists at the University of Amsterdam use SmartEnzymes in a new study of the biological and structural properties of antibody pathogenesis in blood transfusions. Blood transfusions are a vital part of healthcare but can in some cases lead to severe conditions such as anti-leukocyte antibodies in the transfusion product that cause transfusion-mediated acute lung…
Srzentic et al. present an interlaboratory study investigating the current state of top-down and middle-down mass spectrometry methods for the characterization of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and explore the potential added value of these methods to the more commonly used bottom-up mass spectrometry. In the growing market of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), there is an…
