Glycan analysis by LC/MS in regulated environments
A team of scientist from Quality Assistance in collaboration with Alain Beck from Pierre Fabre, have published a detailed article highlighting the analytical strategies for both N- and O-linked glycan analysis of biotherapeutics using LC/MS. The workflows for glycan analysis on antibodies includes FabRICATOR digestion and study of the Fc/2 fragment for identification of the Fc glycoforms. The researchers used widepore HILIC-MS to separate the individual glycoforms of the Fc/2 subunit of adalimumab and obtained the glycoprofile with increased chromatography and MS resolution as compared to intact analysis. When applying the same workflow to cetuximab, site specific glycan profiles of both the Fc and Fd glycosylation sites were obtained.
In the same paper, a workflow combining GlycINATOR (EndoS2) and FabRICATOR (IdeS) was applied to study the level of core afucosylation. This digestions, that can be carried out simultaneously in 30 min, results in a dramatic reduction of the complexity of the Fc/2 subunit. After this simple sample processing the level of GlcNAc, GlcNAc + Fucose, or aglycosylated Fc/2 fragments can be quantified using LC/MS.
Find the paper available in open access here: