Biosmilars, such as monoclonal antibodies and fusion proteins, indicate big potential in pharmaceutical industry. Their availability on the market enables easier access to medicines with the same quality as those of their reference biopharmaceuticals. Successful development of biosimilars depends on in-depth analytical characterization of finally developed recombinant protein and efficient characterization of many samples that are produced throughout development phase. High-throughput methods help us to evaluate large number of samples in shorter time period.
Our purpose was to develop a capillary gel electrophoresis method on a chip, which would be able to determine purity and fragmentation of most therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. We focused on sample preparation since instrumental settings for sample injection and separation could not be changed. Samples were prepared under reduced and non-reduced conditions. We found out that N-ethylmaleimide is more suitable for preparing non-reduced samples than iodoaceamide. Reduced samples were prepared with dithiothreitol and 2-mercaptoethanol. Since there were no significant differences between them and due to the organoleptic characteristics of the latter we decided to use dithiothreitol. Capillary gel electrophoresis on a chip helped us to identify some of the peaks, representing fragments. Due to the complexity of monoclonal antibodies we could not implement a generic nomenclature for all IgG samples. Newly developed method was qualified on four different monoclonal antibodies and one fusion protein. We performed tests for sample stability, limit of quantification, linearity, accuracy, repeatability and robustness of the method. By fulfilling the criteria for all these tests, we assured that method is suitable for its purpose. Complex structure of therapeutic proteins does not assure that our method will be suitable for all proteins. In the future, we might have to adapt some steps of the method to specific protein.
Qualified high-throughput method on a chip was compared to conventional capillary gel electrophoresis method. There are some differences in sample preparation and instrumental settings between both methods. Despite these differences, similar separation profiles, named electropherograms, were observed. Purity and fragmentation of therapeutic proteins between both methods is different to a certain degree. However, both methods are suitable for analytics of samples from different phases of bioprocess development.
|