Development of a surface plasmon resonance sensor for coupling to capillary electrophoresis allowing affinity assessment of protein mixture components

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) currently is the major platform to study protein–protein interactions, but it lacks the selectivity to distinguish between binding components within one sample. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) can provide efficient separation of intact proteins under near-physiological conditions. We have hyphenated CE with SPR to achieve affinity assessment of mixture components. A microfluidic flow cell allowing straightforward coupling of CE and SPR was developed. Initial testing with non-interacting dyes showed good performance using a flow-cell channel volume of 100 nL until the detection point. Appropriate closing of the CE electric circuit was achieved using the SPR gold-sensor as grounding electrode. Division of the (bio)sensor into an electrode part (providing grounding) and a detection part (bearing the affinity surface) was crucial to avoid disturbance of the SPR signal by the CE voltage. This approach permitted CE separation and binding assessment for separation voltages up to 30 kV. Human serum albumin (HSA) or aprotinin were immobilized on carboxymethyldextran hydrogel-coated gold sensors and target proteins (anti-HSA, and trypsin and α-chymotrypsin, respectively) were analyzed. Efficient CE separation of the intact protein analytes was accomplished under native conditions by employing neutral and positively-charged capillary coatings. Selective binding of separated proteins to the target surface could be monitored by SPR down to 2 ng of injected protein. Regeneration of the biosensor surface was achieved by an on-line rising, allowing repeatable CE-SPR analyses of proteins with RSDs below 1% and 5% for migration time and signal intensity, respectively

high resolution glycoform profiling of intact therapeutic proteins by hydrophilic interaction chromatography mass spectrometry

Abstract Glycosylation is considered a critical quality attribute of therapeutic proteins. Protein heterogeneity introduced by glycosylation includes differences in the nature, number and position of the glycans. Whereas analysis of released glycans and glycopeptides provides information about the composition and/or position of the glycan, intact glycoprotein analysis allows assignment of individual proteoforms and co-occurring modifications. Yet, resolving protein glycoforms at the intact level is challenging. We have explored the capacity of hydrophilic liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS) for assessing glycosylation patterns of intact pharmaceutical proteins by analyzing the complex glycoproteins interferon-beta-1a (rhIFN-β − 1a) and recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO). Efficient glycoform separation was achieved using a superficially-porous amide HILIC stationary phase and trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) as eluent additive. In-source collision-induced dissociation proved to be very useful to minimize protein-signal suppression effects by TFA. Direct injection of therapeutic proteins in aqueous formulation was possible without causing extra band dispersion, provided that the sample injection volume was not larger than 2 μL. HILIC-MS of rhIFN-β − 1a and rhEPO allowed the assignment of, respectively, 15 and 51 glycoform compositions, next to a variety of posttranslational modifications, such as succinimide, oxidation and N-terminal methionine-loss products. MS-based assignments showed that neutral glycan units significantly contributed to glycoform separation, whereas terminal sialic acids only had a marginal effect on HILIC retention. Comparisons of HILIC-MS with the selectivity provided by capillary electrophoresis-MS for the same glycoproteins, revealed a remarkable complementarity of the techniques. Finally it was demonstrated that by replacing TFA for difluoroacetic acid, peak resolution somewhat decreased, but rhEPO glycoforms with relative abundances below 1% could be detected by HILIC-MS, increasing the overall rhEPO glycoform coverage to 72

Quality of Original and Biosimilar Epoetin Products

# The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Purpose To compare the quality of therapeutic erythropoietin (EPO) products, including two biosimilars, with respect to content, aggregation, isoform profile and potency. Methods Two original products, Eprex (epoetin alfa) and Dynepo (epoetin delta), and two biosimilar products, Binocrit (epoetin alfa) and Retacrit (epoetin zeta), were compared using (1) high performance size exclusion chromatography, (2) ELISA, (3) SDS-PAGE, (4) capillary zone electrophoresis and (5) in-vivo potency. Results Tested EPO products differed in content, isoform composition, and potency. Conclusion Of the tested products, the biosimilars have the same or even better quality as the originals. Especially, the potency of originals may significantly differ from the value on the label

Online Affinity Assessment and Immunoaffinity Sample Pretreatment in Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has emerged as a very useful technique for the analysis of a variety of components ranging from small ions to large biomolecules. CE provides efficient separations and short analysis times, and allows compound analysis under near-physiological conditions. In the early 1990s of the last century the capability of CE to assess biomolecular affinity interactions was demonstrated and coined affinity capillary electrophoresis (ACE). In the same time, the use of affinity materials for selective online extraction of compounds before CE analysis was established. This immunoaffinity (IA) CE approach aims for highly specific isolation and preconcentration of target analytes from a biological matrix. Currently, both ACE and IA-CE have developed into proven analytical approaches. Over the last two decades, CE coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) has been demonstrated to be a powerful hyphenated technique, combining the high separation efficiency of CE with the selectivity of MS. MS has also been introduced as a detection technique for both ACE and IA-CE. This chapter provides an overview of the developments and applications in ACE-MS and IA-CE-MS. First, the basic aspects of CE, ACE, and IA-CE are introduced. Subsequently, the hyphenation of CE and MS detection is treated, specifically highlighting aspects that are important for affinity determinations. The setup and performance of reported ACE-MS and IA-CE-MS methods are treated systematically and orderly tables summarizing practical aspects of each method are provided. The application of ACE-MS and IA-CE-MS is outlined treating typical examples, such as peptide library screening, study of protein-ligand interactions, and bioanalysis of peptides and proteins