Articles tagged ”GlycINATOR”
New Application Note on Antibody Oxidation Analysis
A Rapid LC-MS Assay for Monitoring of mAb Oxidation at the Subunit Level
Methionine oxidation is considered a critical quality attribute of therapeutic antibodies and may impact the clinical safety and efficacy. Therefore, monitoring of methionine oxidations is required during the discovery, development, and production of therapeutic antibodies. Traditional methods to characterize oxidation rely on tryptic peptide mapping and LC-MS, a labor intensive and time- consuming process that generates large data sets and requires trained and skilled manual interpretations.
Read more »
C-terminal lysine clipping and Fc receptor binding using SmartEnzymes
Researchers at LFB Biotechnologies in Paris, France have carried out a thorough analysis and characterization of the impact of C-terminal lysine clipping to Fc-receptor binding using a range of SmartEnzymes from Genovis.
The scientists separated an IgG1 antibody using SCX separation and purified the fractions without C-terminal lysines K0, with 1 C-terminal lysine K1 and with both lysines intact K2. The purified fractions were characterized for any further differences using FabRICATOR digestion and middle-level analysis. This approached enabled the researchers to study multiple post-translational modifications such as charge variants, oxidations and Fc glycosylation in a simple and robust way. The characterization revealed that the lysine heterogeneity was the main differentiator and all other PTMs were distributed between the fractions.
Read more »
Investigating IgG Delivery Across the Blood-Brain Barrier with GlycINATOR®
Scientists from the University of Delaware demonstrate the use of GlycINATOR for studying transcytosis of IgG in an in vitro model of the blood-brain barrier.
Brain endothelial cells (BECs) are important structural components of the blood-brain barrier with a unique physiology that restricts permeability of blood-borne molecules such as therapeutic antibodies to the brain. The neonatal fragment crystalline receptor (FcRn) is known to mediate IgG recycling and transcytosis in peripheral epithelium, but the role of FcRn in transcytosis of antibodies in BECs remains uncertain.
In this paper, Ruano-Salguero and Lee study the role of FcRn in transcytosis of IgG across the blood-brain barrier in BEC-like cells (iBECs) derived from induced human pluripotent stem cells. Using microscopy-based methods, different antibody species and subunits were compared to investigate the role of FcRn on transcytosis of IgG. To specifically determine the impact of Fc-glycosylation on permeability, all glycoforms on human IgG1 was removed using the GlycINATOR enzyme and the deglycosylated antibodies analyzed in iBECs using live-cell microscopy. Finally, the authors also investigated the impact of biophysical properties such as charge and size on transcytosis mechanisms.
Using the in vitro blood-brain barrier model, the scientists found that FcRn mediates both recycling and reduced lysosomal accumulation of IgG in iBECs. Transcytosis of antibodies across the in vitro blood-brain barrier exhibited non receptor-medicated mechanisms that were unaffected by human FcRn-binding motifs and Fc-glycoforms as demonstrated by the different species and deglycosylated human IgG1. Investigations of intracellular trafficking by FcRn binding or other IgG-specific mechanisms were further observed to be non-saturable, indicating fluid-phase permeability. Interestingly, the authors found that biophysical changes enhanced permeability of molecules with positively charged isoelectric points. These results highlight the potential for use of in vitro models as well as characterization and modification of biophysical properties to improve therapeutic delivery to the brain.
Deglycosylation of IgG using the GlycINATOR enzyme decreases binding to Fc-receptors (FcRs) enabling bifunctional assays to study glycan-mediated interactions such as ADCC activity. The binding to FcRn is however preserved with GlycINATOR, allowing recycling and increased circulation in vivo of deglycosylated IgG and GlyCLICK conjugated ADCs.
SmartEnzymes™ in a new approach to characterize ADCs
Antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) consist of monoclonal antibodies chemically linked to a cytotoxic agent. The target specificity of the monoclonal antibody in combination with the potency of the cytotoxic drug make ADCs promising therapeutic agents. However, the molecules are often complex, making evaluation of the quality attributes for the ADC challenging.
In order to characterize the ADCs, the predominant analysis of choice is peptide mapping with reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) coupled to mass spectrometry. However, the sample preparation steps in a bottom-up approach are often time-consuming and a comprehensive view of ADCs with different sequence variants and post-translational modifications is lacking.
In this recently published article by Chen et al., a middle-down RPLC-MS strategy with electron transfer disscociation (ETD) was developed to analyze lysine and cysteine conjugated ADCs at the subunit level. FabRICATOR® (IdeS) and GingisKHAN® (KGB) were used to generate the subunits. FabRICATOR digests below the hinge, generating F(ab’)2 and Fc/2 fragments, and GingisKHAN digests above the hinge, generating intact Fab and Fc fragments. For the deglycosylation, the IgG-specific endoglycosidase GlycINATOR® (EndoS2) was used.
This middle-down approach enabled high-resolution evaluation of several ADC quality attributes at the subunit level, including drug to antibody ratio (DAR), conjugation sites and micro-variants. The approach shows great potential for investigating quality attributes during the development and characterization of novel ADCs.
Read more about FabRICATOR, GingisKHAN and GlycINATOR.
Glycan analysis by LC/MS in regulated environments
A team of scientist from Quality Assistance in collaboration with Alain Beck from Pierre Fabre, have published a detailed article highlighting the analytical strategies for both N- and O-linked glycan analysis of biotherapeutics using LC/MS. The workflows for glycan analysis on antibodies includes FabRICATOR digestion and study of the Fc/2 fragment for identification of the Fc glycoforms. The researchers used widepore HILIC-MS to separate the individual glycoforms of the Fc/2 subunit of adalimumab and obtained the glycoprofile with increased chromatography and MS resolution as compared to intact analysis. When applying the same workflow to cetuximab, site specific glycan profiles of both the Fc and Fd glycosylation sites were obtained.
In the same paper, a workflow combining GlycINATOR (EndoS2) and FabRICATOR (IdeS) was applied to study the level of core afucosylation. This digestions, that can be carried out simultaneously in 30 min, results in a dramatic reduction of the complexity of the Fc/2 subunit. After this simple sample processing the level of GlcNAc, GlcNAc + Fucose, or aglycosylated Fc/2 fragments can be quantified using LC/MS.
Find the paper available in open access here: