Automated High-Throughput Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Mass Spectrometry Methodology for Formulation Assessment of Polyethylene-Glycol-Conjugated Cytokine Proteins

Abstract

Biological therapeutics are major contributors to the pharmaceutical pipeline and continue to grow in sales and scope. Additionally, the field's understanding of cancer biology has advanced such that biopharmaceuticals can harness the power of the immune system for oncology treatments. Several of these novel therapeutics are engineered versions of naturally occurring proteins designed to improve therapeutic properties including potency, target engagement and half-life extension. Cytokines, such as interferons and interleukins, are a broad class of signaling proteins which modulate the body's immune response; engineered cytokines have entered the clinic as promising new immuno-oncology therapies. While these therapies hold great promise, their additional structural complexity introduces analytical challenges, and traditional analytical platforms may be ill-suited to effectively assess product development risks. Further, the pharmaceutical industry relies on streamlining approaches for high-throughput experimentation to achieve speed and efficiency for the discovery and development of new modalities. These demands necessitate the use of state-of-the-art techniques to rapidly characterize these new modalities and guide process development and optimization. Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-MS) is a rapid, sensitive and automatable technique amenable for high-throughput analysis of proteins. In this work, we have developed an automated MALDI-MS platform to prepare, acquire and analyze molecular degradation in engineered PEGylated cytokines formulation samples. This orthogonal technique integrated seamlessly with current developability risk assessment workflows, ultimately enabling selection of a final formulation strategy for clinical development.