Facile and Efficient Chemoenzymatic Semisynthesis of Fc-Fusion Compounds for Half-Life Extension of Pharmaceutical Components

Bioconjug Chem. 2019 Sep 18;30(9):2323-2331. doi: 10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.9b00235. Epub 2019 May 7.

Abstract

The formation of Fc-fusions, in which biologically active molecules and the Fc fragment of antibodies are linked to each other, is one of the most efficient and successful half-life extension technologies to be developed and applied to peptide and protein pharmaceuticals thus far. Fc-fusion compounds are generally produced by recombinant methods. However, these cannot be applied to artificial middle molecules, such as peptides with non-natural amino acids, unnatural cyclic peptides, or pharmaceutical oligonucleotides. Here, we developed a simple, efficient, semisynthetic method for Fc-fusion production involving our previously developed enzymatic N-terminal extension reaction (i.e., NEXT-A reaction) and strain-promoted azide-alkyne cycloaddition, achieving quantitative conversion and high selectivity for the N-terminus of the Fc protein. An Fc-fusion compound prepared by this method showed comparable biological activity to that of the original peptide and a long-circulating plasma half-life. Thus, the proposed method is potentially applicable for the conjugation of a wide range of pharmaceutical components.

MeSH terms

  • Alkynes / chemistry
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Animals
  • Azides / chemistry
  • Cycloaddition Reaction
  • Half-Life
  • Immunoglobulin Fc Fragments / chemistry*
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Mice, Inbred C57BL
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins / chemical synthesis*
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins / chemistry
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins / pharmacokinetics*

Substances

  • Alkynes
  • Azides
  • Immunoglobulin Fc Fragments
  • Recombinant Fusion Proteins