Immunotherapy is revolutionizing health care, with the majority of high impact "drugs" approved in the past decade falling into this category of therapy. Despite considerable success, glycosylation-a key design parameter that ensures safety, optimizes biological response, and influences the pharmacokinetic properties of an immunotherapeutic-has slowed the development of this class of drugs in the past and remains challenging at present. This article describes how optimizing glycosylation through a variety of glycoengineering strategies provides enticing opportunities to not only avoid past pitfalls, but also to substantially improve immunotherapies including antibodies and recombinant proteins, and cell-based therapies. We cover design principles important for early stage pre-clinical development and also discuss how various glycoengineering strategies can augment the biomanufacturing process to ensure the overall effectiveness of immunotherapeutics.
Keywords: antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity (ADCC); antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs); glycoengineering; glycosylation; immunotherapy; metabolic glycoengineering; monoclonal antibodies.