Accelerated purification process development of monoclonal antibodies for shortening time to clinic. Design and case...

For accelerating the purification process development of human monoclonal antibodies (hmAbs) for pharmaceutical drugs, we designed a standardized method for setting the conditions of the purification process, which could be applied to hmAbs for the early phase of pharmaceutical development. The process includes three sequential chromatography steps: Protein A affinity chromatography (AFC), anion-exchange chromatography (AIEC) and cation-exchange chromatography (CIEC), and also includes a low pH virus inactivation step after the AFC step. We predicted the elution pH in the AFC and elution salt concentration in the CIEC from the amino acid sequences of hmAbs, as described in our previous paper. The mobile phase pH in AIEC and the pH for virus inactivation were also predicted based on the amino acid sequence of hmAb. As a case study, six hmAbs (two of IgG(1), two of IgG(2) and two of IgG(4)) were purified with the standardized method. The recovery, purity and clearance of impurities (DNA, host cell proteins (HCP), and Protein A) were examined. All the six hmAbs were purified with high recovery and high clearance of the impurities. Factors affecting the impurities level in the purified products are also discussed.