Combination of IM-Based Approaches to Unravel the Coexistence of Two Conformers on a Therapeutic Multispecific mAb
Résumé
Multispecific antibodies, which target multiple
antigens at once, are emerging as promising therapeutic entities to
offer more effective treatment than conventional monoclonal
antibodies (mAbs). However, these highly complex mAb formats
pose significant analytical challenges. We report here on the
characterization of a trispecific antibody (tsAb), which presents
two isomeric forms clearly separated and identified with size
exclusion chromatography coupled to native mass spectrometry
(SEC-nMS). Previous studies showed that these isomers might
originate from a proline cis/trans isomerization in one Fab subunit of
the tsAb. We combined several innovative ion mobility (IM)-based
approaches to confirm the isomeric nature of the two species and to
gain new insights into the conformational landscape of both isomers.
Preliminary SEC-nIM-MS measurements performed on a low IM resolution instrument provided the first hints of the coexistence of
different conformers, while complementary collision-induced unfolding (CIU) experiments evidenced distinct gas-phase unfolding
behaviors upon activation for the two isomers. As subtle conformational differences remained poorly resolved on our early
generation IM platform, we performed high-resolution cyclic IM (cIM-MS) to unambiguously conclude on the coexistence of two
conformers. The cis/trans equilibrium was further tackled by exploiting the IMn slicing capabilities of the cIM-MS instrument.
Altogether, our results clearly illustrate the benefits of combining state-of-the-art nMS and IM-MS approaches to address challenging
issues encountered in biopharma. As engineered antibody constructs become increasingly sophisticated, CIU and cIM-MS
methodologies undoubtedly have the potential to integrate the drug development analytical toolbox to achieve in-depth
conformational characterization of these products