Development of a bioassay as a measure of drozitumab-mediated apoptosis induced by soluble Fc gamma receptors

Abstract

Drozitumab is an agonistic therapeutic monoclonal antibody (mAb) against the pro-apoptotic death receptor 5 (DR5). In vitro cell killing assays using drozitumab have traditionally required cross-linking with anti-Fc antibody to amplify the pro-apoptotic signal, although drozitumab shows activity in in vivo tumor models without artificial cross-linking. Recently it has been shown that FcγR expressing cells play an important role in the activity of drozitumab by mediating cross-linking in vivo (Wilson et al., 2011). To provide a more biologically relevant alternative to cross-linking with anti-Fc antibody in in vitro bioassays, methods for cross-linking with soluble FcγR extracellular domain (ECD) were developed in this work.FcγR cross-linking methods developed in this work were assessed in solution, bead-bound, and plate-bound assay formats, as well as a cell-based assay format. The assays showed reproducible drozitumab dose-response curves in the concentration range of 5–20,000ng/mL and had acceptable precision and accuracy. The assays are also able to detect degradative changes in drozitumab samples subjected to thermal stress. The data suggest that FcγR cross-linking of drozitumab is a viable alternative to anti-Fc cross-linking of drozitumab to measure effector mediated apoptosis of drozitumab in vitro.