Highland games: A benchmarking exercise in predicting biophysical and drug properties of monoclonal antibodies from amino acid sequences.

Biopharmaceutical product and process development do not yet take advantage of predictive computational modeling to nearly the degree seen in industries based on smaller molecules. To assess and advance progress in this area, spirited coopetition (mutually beneficial collaboration between competitors) was successfully used to motivate industrial scientists to develop, share, and compare data and methods which would normally have remained confidential. The first "Highland Games" competition was held in conjunction with the October 2018 Recovery of Biological Products Conference in Ashville, NC, with the goal of benchmarking and assessment of the ability to predict development-related properties of six antibodies from their amino acid sequences alone. Predictions included purification-influencing properties such as isoelectric point and protein A elution pH, and biophysical properties such as stability and viscosity at very high concentrations. Essential contributions were made by a large variety of individuals, including companies which consented to provide antibody amino acid sequences and test materials, volunteers who undertook the preparation and experimental characterization of these materials, and prediction teams who attempted to predict antibody properties from sequence alone. Best practices were identified and shared, and areas in which the community excels at making predictions were identified, as well as areas presenting opportunities for considerable improvement. Predictions of isoelectric point and protein A elution pH were especially good with all-prediction average errors of 0.2 and 1.6 pH unit, respectively, while predictions of some other properties were notably less good. This manuscript presents the events, methods, and results of the competition, and can serve as a tutorial and as a reference for in-house benchmarking by others. Organizations vary in their policies concerning disclosure of methods, but most managements were very cooperative with the Highland Games exercise, and considerable insight into common and best practices is available from the contributed methods. The accumulated data set will serve as a benchmarking tool for further development of in silico prediction tools.

Analysis of monoclonal antibody oxidation by simple mixed mode chromatography.

Analysis of oxidation of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in most cases relies on peptide mapping and LC-MS, which is time consuming and labor-intensive. A robust chromatography based method that is able to resolve and quantitate mAb oxidation variants due to oxidized methionine or tryptophan is highly desired. Here we developed a novel mixed mode chromatography method using the unique property of Sepax Zenix SEC-300MK column to analyze mAb oxidation levels. The separation of oxidized species relied upon the mixed mode of size exclusion and hydrophobic interaction between the resin and antibodies. The chromatography was performed in a regular SEC mobile phase, PBS, containing NaCl at a concentration (0-2.4M) specific for individual antibodies. This method was able to resolve and quantitate the oxidized antibodies as prepeaks, of either methionine-oxidized species induced by the common oxidants TBHP, tryptophan-oxidized species triggered by AAPH, or oxidized species by UV photo-irradiation. The prepeaks were further characterized by SEC-MALLS as monomers and confirmed by LC-MS as oxidized antibody variants with a mass increase of 16 or 32Da. This method has been successfully applied to monitor multiple monoclonal antibodies of IgG1, IgG2, and IgG4 subclasses.