Quality Control and Downstream Processing of Therapeutic Enzymes.

Abstract

Therapeutic enzymes are a commercially minor but clinically important area of biopharmaceuticals. An array of therapeutic enzymes has been developed for a variety of human diseases, including leukaemia and enzyme-deficiency diseases such as Gaucher's disease. Production and testing of therapeutic enzymes is strictly governed by regulatory bodies in each country around the world, and batch-to-batch consistency is crucially important. Manufacture of a batch starts with the fermentation or cell culture stage. After expression of the therapeutic enzyme in a cell culture bioreactor, robust and reproducible protein purification, or downstream processing (DSP) of the target product, is critical to ensuring safe delivery of these medicines. Modern processing technology, including the use of disposable processing equipment, has greatly improved the DSP development pathway in terms of robustness and speed to clinic. Once purified, the drug substance undergoes rigorous quality control (QC) testing according to current regulatory guidance, to enable release to the clinic and patient. QC testing is conducted to ensure the safety, purity, identity, potency and strength of the medicinal product, requiring multiple analytical methods that are rigorously validated and monitored for robust performance. Several case studies, including L-asparaginase and asfotase alfa, are discussed to illustrate the methods described herein.