IgG has a long half-life through engagement of its Fc region with the neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn). The FcRn binding site on IgG1 has been shown to contain I253 and H310 in the CH2 domain and H435 in the CH3 domain. Altering the half-life of IgG has been pursued with the aim to prolong or reduce the half-life of therapeutic IgGs. More recent studies have shown that IgGs bind differently to mouse and human FcRn. In this study we characterize a set of hu3S193 IgG1 variants with mutations in the FcRn binding site. A double mutation in the binding site is necessary to abrogate binding to murine FcRn, whereas a single mutation in the FcRn binding site is sufficient to no longer detect binding to human FcRn and create hu3S193 IgG1 variants with a half-life similar to previously studied hu3S193 F(ab')2 (t1/2β, I253A, 12.23 h; H310A, 12.94; H435A, 12.57; F(ab')2, 12.6 h). Alanine substitutions in S254 in the CH2 domain and Y436 in the CH3 domain showed reduced binding in vitro to human FcRn and reduced elimination half-lives in huFcRn transgenic mice (t1/2β, S254A, 37.43 h; Y436A, 39.53 h; wild-type, 83.15 h). These variants had minimal effect on half-life in BALB/c nu/nu mice (t1/2β, S254A, 119.9 h; Y436A, 162.1 h; wild-type, 163.1 h). These results provide insight into the interaction of human Fc by human FcRn, and are important for antibody-based therapeutics with optimal pharmacokinetics for payload strategies used in the clinic.
Keywords: Antibody engineering; Fc receptors; molecular biology; neonatal Fc receptor; transgenic mice.