International comparability in spectroscopic measurements of protein structure by circular dichroism: CCQM-P59.1

Circular dichroism (CD) is a spectroscopic technique that is widely used to obtain information about protein structure, and hence is an important tool with many applications, including the characterization of biopharmaceuticals. A previous inter-laboratory study, CCQM-P59, showed that there was a poor level of comparability between laboratories in CD spectroscopy. In a follow-up study reported here, we achieved our goal of demonstrating improved comparability and data quality, primarily by addressing the problems identified in the previous study, which included cell path-length measurement, instrument calibration and good practice in general. Multivariate analysis techniques (principal component analysis and soft independent modelling of class analogies) were shown to be useful in comparing large spectral data sets and in classifying spectra. However, our results also show that there is more work to be done to improve confidence in the technique as the discrepancies observed were partially due to systematic effects, which the statistical approaches do not consider. We therefore conclude that there is a need for an improved understanding of the uncertainties in CD measurement

International comparability in spectroscopic measurements of protein structure by circular dichroism : CCQM-P59

Circular dichroism is a spectroscopic technique that is widely used to obtain information about protein structure, and hence is an important tool with many applications, including the characterization of biopharmaceuticals. However, there is a lack of confidence in the technique, arising from an observed lack of comparability in the data obtained by different laboratories, or even different operators. In this study, we set out to determine the extent of comparability in the technique, by comparing the results obtained from identical protein samples by a panel of worldwide laboratories. The laboratories chosen were either national measurement institutes (NMIs) or expert laboratories nominated by an NMI. We also aimed to identify the main factors contributing to any lack of measurement comparability. Data were analysed using PCA and SIMCA methods, and we show these statistical techniques are ideal for analysing large amounts of this type of spectroscopic data. We found a startling lack of comparability among laboratories, but we also found that most of the variability arose from relatively simple problems, which can be avoided by following simple guidelines. We believe that the lack of an absolute reference or measurement traceability in circular dichroism contributes to a lack of confidence in the technique.27 page(s