Capillary Electrophoresis Method for the Assessment of Erythropoiesis-Stimulating Agents in Final Formulations.

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) comprises several separation modes that can be used to characterize proteins in terms of physico-chemical properties such as isoelectric point or molecular weight, or in terms of purity/heterogeneity for the presence of charge or size variants. In glycoproteins the heterogeneity occurring as a consequence of variable amounts of terminal sialic acid residues on glycan moieties can be detected by CE. As such, a capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) method was found suitable for the detection of isoforms of several erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (Bietlot and Girard, J Chromatogr A 759:177-184, 1997; Boucher et al., J Pharm Biomed Anal 71:207-213, 2012). In particular, the method can be used to analyze finished products containing erythropoietin-α, erythropoietin-ß, or darbepoetin-α regardless of the formulation and without the need for sample pretreatment. The major excipients encountered in the various formulations included polysorbate 80, polysorbate 20, or human serum albumin. The ability of the method to resolve isoforms of the active ingredient in finished product enables the comparison of the isoform profile with that of the corresponding drug substance, allowing the assessment of the structural integrity and content of the active ingredients in finished products.

Qualitative and quantitative assessment of marketed erythropoiesis-stimulating agents by capillary electrophoresis.

Formulated erythropoiesis stimulating agents (ESAs) containing erythropoietin (EPO)-alpha, EPO-beta or darbepoetin-alpha were analyzed by capillary electrophoresis with a previously published method requiring no sample pre-treatment [1]. In this study, the method proved to be applicable to all formulations encountered, that is, in the presence of polysorbate 80, polysorbate 20 or human serum albumin as major excipients, thus extending the range of products that can be analyzed without pre-treatment. Method performance was evaluated and showed good linearity, range, precision and sensitivity. No significant matrix effects were observed for the various formulations. The ability of the method to resolve isoforms of each of the three active ingredients enabled comparison of the isoform distribution of finished products with that of the respective drug substance. In general, finished products and their corresponding drug substances showed similar isoform distribution and all were within manufacturer specifications. In addition, the content in active ingredient in the various dosage strengths was found to be in close agreement with the label claims with the exception of 2 out of 131 containers analyzed. Overall, this study demonstrated that the capillary zone electrophoresis method could be successfully applied to the analysis of most of the ESA products currently on the market in North America and Europe and that all products were found to have good batch-to-batch consistency.

Utility of standard pharmacopeial and nonpharmacopeial methods in distinguishing folded, unfolded, and process variant forms of interferon α-2.

Standard pharmacopeial test methods for biologics broadly focus on identity (active substance and impurities) and function (activity and toxicity). However, it is less clear which, if any, of the methods can identify a subtle change in protein therapeutics such as misfolding, unusual product-related impurities, or sequence or folding variants that may result from differences in manufacturing processes. In this study, we test the ability of standard pharmacopeia monograph methods and other common physicochemical methods (including circular dichroism spectropolarimetry, fluorescence spectroscopy, thermal denaturation, mass spectrometry, and capillary electrophoresis) to differentiate folding variants [purposely denatured interferon (IFN) α-2] and sequence variants (deliberately truncated, or truncated and chemically modified) from the IFN α-2 reference standards. The results show that the standard pharmacopeial methods are of limited utility in detecting alterations in protein structure, even when those alterations include changes in primary structure. None of the pharmacopeial methods were clear probes of higher order structure. The nonpharmacopeial methods were somewhat more successful but not a single method was able to distinguish all variants tested from the authentic standard. Taken together, the data underscore the requirement to use several different and complementary methods and stress conditions to assess primary and higher order structure when assessing the comparability in potential biosimilar protein products.