Site-Specific Conjugation Quantitation of a Cysteine-Conjugated Antibody-Drug Conjugate Using Stable Isotope Labeling Peptide Mapping LC-MS/MS Analysis

Anal Chem. 2022 Feb 15;94(6):2772-2778. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c04025. Epub 2022 Feb 1.

Abstract

Drug-load (DL) characterization of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) is an important analytical task due to its designation as a critical quality attribute (CQA) affecting potency and stability. Intact and subunit liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analyses can determine global drug-to-antibody ratios (DARs) that correlate well with other orthogonal analytical methods; however, peptide mapping liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis has struggled to provide complementary site-specific quantitation of drug conjugation sites. The peptide mapping method described herein utilizes stable isotope labeling to accurately quantitate the site-specific conjugation levels of a cysteine-conjugated ADC to provide "bottom-up" DAR characterization in parallel with protein sequence and post-translational modification (PTM) characterization in one multi-attribute analytical method (MAM).

MeSH terms

  • Chromatography, Liquid / methods
  • Cysteine / chemistry
  • Immunoconjugates* / chemistry
  • Isotope Labeling
  • Peptide Mapping
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Substances

  • Immunoconjugates
  • Cysteine