Whitepapers/App Notes/Posters

Whitepaper: Characterising antibody-drug conjugates using micro pillar array columns combined with mass spectrometry (μPAC™-MS)

Posted: 12 December 2018 | | No comments yet

The use of micro pillar array columns (μPAC™) for characterising antibody-drug conjugates is presented. Kadcyla® (ado-trastuzumab emtansine) and, for comparison, Herceptin® (trastuzumab) tryptic digests were analysed on a 200 cm μPAC™ C18 column and peaks eluting were detected by ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy and high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS).

The successes of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) as therapeutics have triggered the development of various next generation formats. In oncology, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are particularly promising, since they synergistically combine a specific mAb linked to a biologically active cytotoxic drug via a stable linker. The promise of ADCs is that highly toxic drugs can selectively be delivered to tumor cells thereby substantially lowering side effects as typically experienced with classical chemotherapy. Currently two ADCs are marketed, namely brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris®) and ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla®) and over 30 are in clinical trials. From a structural point of view, ADCs possess an unsurpassed complexity since the heterogeneity of the initial antibody is superimposed with the variability associated with the conjugation strategy. Conjugation typically takes place on the amino groups of lysine residues or on the sulphydryl groups of interchain cysteine residues as is the case in, respectively, ado-trastuzumab emtansine and brentuximab vedotin. With 80-100 lysine and only 8 interchain cysteine residues available, lysine conjugation yields a more heterogeneous mixture of species compared to cysteine conjugation this despite the similar overall level of drugs incorporated per antibody (between 0 and 8 with an average of 3-4). This application note demonstrates how micro pillar array columns (μPAC™) in combination with ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy and high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) comes in as a very powerful tool to assess drug conjugation sites.

The rest of this application note is restricted - login or subscribe free to access

EPR Issue 1 2024Thank you for visiting our website. To access this content in full you'll need to login. It's completely free to subscribe, and in less than a minute you can continue reading. If you've already subscribed, great - just login.

Why subscribe? Join our growing community of thousands of industry professionals and gain access to:

  • bi-monthly issues in print and/or digital format
  • case studies, whitepapers, webinars and industry-leading content
  • breaking news and features
  • our extensive online archive of thousands of articles and years of past issues
  • ...And it's all free!

Click here to Subscribe today Login here