THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBING
Pharma Tech Outlook | Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Protein characterization abilities have advanced significantly due to automation and enhanced manual procedures.
Fremont, CA: While monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) dominate the biologics market, many new treatment modalities are being developed in the biopharma industry, with some already being commercialized. Many of these next-generation therapies have different analytical requirements. Accelerated approval designations add to the difficulty of shortening development schedules.
Stay ahead of the industry with exclusive feature stories on the top companies, expert insights and the latest news delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe today.
Protein characterization is a growing and meaningful application in the biopharmaceutical business, allowing for the assessment of essential quality characteristics (CQAs) such as identification, potency, purity, and stability. Analytical technology platforms that can assist biopharma businesses in meeting CQAs and developing repeatable and robust development and validation methodologies are critical.
The ability to automate and improve the robustness of present manual operations has resulted in greater usage of existing technology, which has resulted in quantifiable improvements in protein characterization capabilities. Because of its significance in biotherapeutic characterization, the main overall trend is for LC-MS to move out of the laboratory and into the quality control lab. Many labs are now researching the potential to monitor product and process variation at the complete, subunit, or peptide level with improved specificity and sensitivity while performing fewer assays for both development and manufacturing/quality control purposes.
Intact protein analysis with ultra-high mass range (UHMR)-MS, as well as simpler and less expensive instruments for functional assessment of binding activity and protein secondary structure, are essential recent breakthroughs in protein characterization.
In some areas, sensitive detection and quantification of sub-visible virus particles and protein aggregates are improving. Improved in-vitro bioassays, analytical methods runnable under good manufacturing practices (GMPs) using fully 21 CFR Part 11-compliant instruments and software, native LC-MS of large intact proteins, and glycoproteins by various HPLC methods including ion-exchange (IEX) and size-exclusion chromatography, and alternate solutions are just a few examples.
Other MS-based approaches that should find use with protein biologics include ion mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS) and hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS). Because the structure of the molecule can differentiate numerous conformations, aggregation states, or tiny mass changes that create protein heterogeneity, IM-MS adds a new dimension to MS. In the meantime, HDX-MS can be used to investigate protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions, as well as conformational changes related to protein activity and protein stability, among other things. The detailed understanding of protein behavior that HDX-MS provides has direct application in biologics drug discovery and development.
More in News