Development and fit-for-purpose verification of an LC-MS method for quantitation of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins in influenza virus-like particle vaccine candidates.

Recombinant influenza Virus-Like Particle (VLP) vaccines are promising vaccine candidates to prevent influenza, contain two major viral antigenic glycoproteins, Hemagglutinin (HA) and Neuraminidase (NA), on the surface of recombinant VLPs. Accurate quantitation of the mass of these antigenic proteins is important to ensure the product quality and proper dosing. Currently, Single Radial Immunodiffusion (SRID) is a recognized assay for determination of the HA immuno-reactive concentration (potency) in vaccine products, based on immuno-reactivity of HA with strain-specific antisera. The SRID assay, however, requires availability of strain-specific and properly calibrated reagents, which can be time-consuming to generate and calibrate. In addition, the assay is not suitable for quantitation of low abundant proteins, such as NA. In order to accelerate the overall production cycle, we have developed and optimized a high-resolution (HR) LC-MS method for absolute quantitation of both HA and NA protein concentrations in influenza VLP vaccine candidates. In this work, we present the method development, optimization and verification of its suitability for the intended purpose, as a prerequisite for its potential application in Quality Control, by assessing specificity, precision and accuracy, detection characteristics, and dynamic linear range. The method can be also used for other HA/NA containing preparations including in-process samples, purified proteins, whole virus preparations, nano-particle and egg-based vaccine preparations, or for calibration of SRID reference antigens.

A Novel Dual Expression Platform for High Throughput Functional Screening of Phage Libraries in Product like Format.

High throughput screenings of single chain Fv (scFv) antibody phage display libraries are currently done as soluble scFvs produced in E.coli. Due to endotoxin contaminations from bacterial cells these preparations cannot be reliably used in mammalian cell based assays. The monovalent nature and lack of Fc in soluble scFvs prevent functional assays that are dependent on target cross linking and/or Fc functions. A convenient approach is to convert scFvs into scFv.Fc fusion proteins and express them in mammalian cell lines for screening. This approach is low throughput and is only taken after primary screening of monovalent scFvs that are expressed in bacteria. There is no platform at present that combines the benefits of both bacterial and mammalian expression system for screening phage library output. We have, therefore, developed a novel dual expression vector, called pSplice, which can be used to express scFv.Fc fusion proteins both in E.coli and mammalian cell lines. The hallmark of the vector is an engineered intron which houses the bacterial promoter and signal peptide for expression and secretion of scFv.Fc in E.coli. When the vector is transfected into a mammalian cell line, the intron is efficiently spliced out resulting in a functional operon for expression and secretion of the scFv.Fc fusion protein into the culture medium. By applying basic knowledge of mammalian introns and splisosome, we designed this vector to enable screening of phage libraries in a product like format. Like IgG, the scFv.Fc fusion protein is bi-valent for the antigen and possesses Fc effector functions. Expression in E.coli maintains the speed of the bacterial expression platform and is used to triage clones based on binding and other assays that are not sensitive to endotoxin. Triaged clones are then expressed in a mammalian cell line without the need for any additional cloning steps. Conditioned media from the mammalian cell line containing the fusion proteins are then used for different types of cell based assays. Thus this system retains the speed of the current screening system for phage libraries and adds additional functionality to it.

O-xylosylation in a recombinant protein is directed at a common motif on glycine-serine linkers.

Glycine-serine (GS) linkers are commonly used in recombinant proteins to connect domains. Here, we report the posttranslational O-glycosylation of a GS linker in a novel fusion protein. The structure of the O-glycan moiety is a xylose-based core substituted with hexose and sulfated hexauronic acid residues. The total level of O-xylosylation was approximately 30% in the material expressed in HEK-293 cell lines. There was an approximate 10-fold reduction in O-xylosylation levels when the material was expressed in Chinese hamster ovary cell lines. Similar O-glycan structures have been reported for human urinary thrombomodulin and represent the initial building block for proteoglycans such as chondroitin sulfate and heparin. The sites of attachment, determined by electron transfer dissociation mass spectrometry, were localized to serine in the linker regions of the recombinant fusion protein. This attachment could be attributed, in part, to the inherent xylosyltransferase motif present in GS linkers. Elimination of the O-glycan moiety was achieved with modified linkers containing only glycine residues. The aggregation and fragmentation behavior of the GGG construct were comparable to the GSG-linked material during thermal stress. The O-xylosylation reported has implications for the manufacturing consistency of recombinant proteins containing GS linkers.