Antibodies are a highly successful class of biological drugs, with over 50 such molecules approved for therapeutic use and hundreds more currently in clinical development. Improvements in technology for the discovery and optimization of high-potency antibodies have greatly increased the chances for finding binding molecules with desired biological properties; however, achieving drug-like properties at the same time is an additional requirement that is receiving increased attention. In this work, we attempt to quantify the historical limits of acceptability for multiple biophysical metrics of "developability." Amino acid sequences from 137 antibodies in advanced clinical stages, including 48 approved for therapeutic use, were collected and used to construct isotypematched IgG1 antibodies, which were then expressed in mammalian cells. The resulting material for each source antibody was evaluated in a dozen biophysical property assays. The distributions of the observed metrics are used to empirically define boundaries of drug-like behavior that can represent practical guidelines for future antibody drug candidates.monoclonal antibody | developability | biophysical properties | manufacturability | nonspecificity T arget binding is the predominant first concern in development of any drug. However, once a lead molecule attains the desired potency of biological modification, a suite of characteristics termed "developability" assumes critical importance. For monoclonal antibodies, these properties include high-level expression, high solubility, covalent integrity, conformational and colloidal stability, low polyspecificity, and low immunogenicity. The high cost of failing any of these criteria at a late stage in drug development has led to considerable efforts at predicting developability on the basis of sequence motifs and experimentally determined biophysical properties (1-15).In a landmark study of small-molecule drugs over 2,000 molecules with United States Adopted Names (USAN) designations and known to have oral availability were collected and computationally analyzed (16). A simple set of thresholds, encapsulated as the "Lipinski rule of fives," was formulated and has been used by many to prioritize small molecules for entry into clinical development. To date, analogous guiding principles for antibody drugs have not emerged-we therefore endeavor here to do so. By analogy to the Lipinski effort, we first collected the sequences of antibodies that had reached at least phase-2 trials and had USAN or WHO International Nonproprietary Names (INN) designations (137 in total as of the start of this project). As a common basis for comparison of intrinsic variable domain phenotypes we expressed each antibody as the human IgG1 isotype and formulated them in simple Hepes-buffered saline. Each antibody was then subjected to a battery of 12 different biophysical assays in common use for developability assessment.Unexpectedly, for many of the measures the distribution of values was not symmetrically Gaussian, but instead was lon...

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(2015) High throughput cross-interaction measures for human IgG1 antibodies correlate with clearance rates in mice, mAbs, 7:4, 770-777, DOI: 10.1080/19420862.2015 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10. 1080/19420862.2015 Keywords: high throughput screening, developability, monoclonal antibody, PK, clearance, cross-interaction, self-interaction, non-specificity, stickinessAbbreviations: mAb, monoclonal antibody; PSR, poly specificity reagent; SMP, soluble membrane proteins; CSI-BLI, clone self-interaction-biolayer interferometry; CIC, cross-interaction chromatography; SEC, size exclusion chromatography; AC-SINS, affinity capture self-interaction nanoparticle spectroscopy; SEC, size exclusion chromatographyAlthough improvements in technology for the isolation of potential therapeutic antibodies have made the process increasingly predictable, the development of biologically active monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) into drugs can often be impeded by developability issues such as poor expression, solubility, and promiscuous cross-reactivity. Establishing early stage developability screening assays capable of predicting late stage behavior is therefore of high value to minimize development risks. Toward this goal, we selected a panel of 16 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) representing different developability profiles, in terms of self-and cross-interaction propensity, and examined their downstream behavior from expression titer to accelerated stability and pharmacokinetics in mice. Clearance rates showed significant rank-order correlations to 2 cross-interaction related assays, with the closest correlation to a non-specificity assay on the surface of yeast. Additionally, 2 self-association assays correlated with each other but not to mouse clearance rate. This case study suggests that combining assays capable of high throughput screening of self-and cross-interaction early in the discovery stage could significantly lower downstream development risks.

Contemporary in vivo and in vitro discovery platform technologies greatly increase the odds of identifying high-affinity monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) towards essentially any desired biologically relevant epitope. Lagging discovery throughput is the ability to select for highly developable mAbs with drug-like properties early in the process. Upstream consideration of developability metrics should reduce the frequency of failures in later development stages. As the field moves towards incorporating biophysical screening assays in parallel to discovery processes, similar approaches should also be used to ensure robust chemical stability. Optimization of chemical stability in the early stages of discovery has the potential to reduce complications in formulation development and improve the potential for successful liquid formulations. However, at present, our knowledge of the chemical stability characteristics of clinical-stage therapeutic mAbs is fragmented and lacks comprehensive comparative assessment. To address this knowledge gap, we produced 131 mAbs with amino acid sequences corresponding to the variable regions of clinical-stage mAbs, subjected these to low and high pH stresses and identified the resulting modifications at amino acid-level resolution via tryptic peptide mapping. Among this large set of mAbs, relatively high frequencies of asparagine deamidation events were observed in CDRs H2 and L1, while CDRs H3, H2 and L1 contained relatively high frequencies of instances of aspartate isomerization.

Graphical Abstract Highlights d Description of the biophysical properties of 400 human B cellderived antibodies d Human B cell-derived antibodies generally show ''drug-like'' developability profiles d Affinity maturation leads to reduced antibody polyreactivity and hydrophobicity d Somatic hypermutation is associated with decreased conformational stability SUMMARY Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have recently emerged as one of the most promising classes of biotherapeutics. A potential advantage of B cell-derived mAbs as therapeutic agents is that they have been subjected to natural filtering mechanisms, which may enrich for B cell receptors (BCRs) with favorable biophysical properties. Here, we evaluated 400 human mAbs for polyreactivity, hydrophobicity, and thermal stability using high-throughput screening assays. Overall, mAbs derived from memory B cells and long-lived plasma cells (LLPCs) display reduced levels of polyreactivity, hydrophobicity, and thermal stability compared with naive B cell-derived mAbs. Somatic hypermutation (SHM) is inversely associated with all three biophysical properties, as well as BCR expression levels. Finally, the developability profiles of the human B cell-derived mAbs are comparable with those observed for clinical mAbs, suggesting their high therapeutic potential. The results provide insight into the biophysical consequences of affinity maturation and have implications for therapeutic antibody engineering and development.