Streamlined Characterization of an Antibody Drug Conjugate by Two-Dimensional and Four-Dimensional Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry

This study describes the use of a multidimensional HPLC (2D and 4D) system for a faster and more effective characterization of an antibody drug conjugate (ADC) product, compared to the standard off-line approach of fraction collection and off-line variant characterization. The size variants of an interchain cysteine-linked ADC were characterized to understand the effect of the different drug-to-antibody ratio (DAR) species on aggregate formation. For this purpose, the ADC product and a full panel of stressed samples were analyzed. The dimeric ADC species were baseline resolved from the main peak (Rs = 2.7) by UHP-SEC (ultra-high-performance size exclusion chromatography) under nondenaturing conditions using a buffered mobile phase containing 5% 2-propanol. A 2D-LC (SEC-HIC) method was then developed to compare the average DAR values of the main peak species vs the aggregates. A 4D-LC/MS method (SEC-reduction-digestion-RPHPLC) was also developed to determine levels of potential critical quality attributes (pCQAs) including aggregation, average DAR, oxidation, and deamidation, in a 2 h run. An average DAR value of 3.5-3.6 was found for the main peak using both 2D-LC and 4D-LC methods, and these values were consistent with DAR determined by the in-house reference hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC) method. The multidimensional LC approaches also showed an increase in the content of high-DAR species in the SEC fractions containing the aggregates. Overall the entire workflow of data acquisition is completed within a day using the multidimensional on-line approach, in comparison to multiple days required with the traditional off-line approaches.