New Spectrometry Technique Could Aid Formulation Development
A new spectrometry technique could help companies better understand what happens when antigens and antibodies bind. Its developers hope it could help with applications including choosing formulation buffers during manufacturing. The post New Spectrometry Technique Could Aid Formulation Development appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News .
A groundbreaking technique that merges two spectrometry methods may assist biopharmaceutical firms in refining their choice of formulation buffer for antibody creation, according to Christian Bleiholder, PhD, a Florida State University professor. This technique aims to illuminate how intricate biological molecules, like antibodies or viral spike proteins, behave in their surroundings.
Bleiholder elucidates that the structural transformations occurring when these molecules bind to their targets remain largely unexplored, which can impact the product's longevity and result in complications such as aggregation. Antibodies, being complex, typically prompt the use of specialized techniques, each excelling in specific areas of complexity.
Mass spectrometry excels at distinguishing molecular composition, while techniques like X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy deliver high-resolution structural details. The difficulty lies in comprehending the correlation between these elements within a sample with varied components. To tackle this challenge, Bleiholder and his team, in collaboration with Bruker Daltonics, devised Tandem-Trapped Ion Mobility Spectrometry (Tandem-TIMS).
This novel approach amalgamates tandem ion mobility spectrometry with tandem mass spectrometry to disentangle three interwoven layers of molecular intricacy: molecular form, three-dimensional shape, and binding or assembly state. Bleiholder elaborates that if the proteins exhibit different structures, they can be analyzed using tandem ion mobility spectrometry, followed by mass spectrometry to investigate their molecular forms and binding states.
In the future, Bleiholder anticipates that this technique could be employed for formulation development and even earlier, during drug discovery for novel products, including multi-specific antibodies, to ascertain which molecular states are crucial and how they evolve upon interaction with the target. He also aims to automate the technique. Bleiholder presented Tandem-TIMS at the Bioprocessing Summit in Boston earlier this year.
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