A single liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometric method for the quantification of total antibody, antibody-conjugated drug and free payload of antibody-drug conjugates

A single hybrid affinity-captured-LC-TOF-MS/MS method was developed and applied for the quantification of total antibody, antibody conjugated drug and free payload of antibody drug conjugate (ADC). Adcetris®, a valine-citrulline monomethyl auristatin E conjugated ADC, was used as a model ADC compound. A quadratic regression (weighted 1/concentration) was used to fit calibration curves over the concentration range 30.65-613.00 ng/mL with an equation y = ax² + bx + c for the antibody-conjugated drug of Adcetris®. The qualification run met the acceptance criteria of ±25% accuracy and precision values for quality control samples. For the analysis of total antibody, a signature peptide (TTPPVLDSDGSFFLYSK, molecular weight 1874) was used after affinity capture using magnetic beads and on-bead trypsin digestion. A quadratic regression (weighted 1/concentration) was used to fit calibration curves over the concentration range 5.00-100.00 μg/mL with an equation y = ax² + bx + c for total antibody. For free payload analysis of monomethyl auristatin E, a protein precipitation method followed by LC-TOF-MS/MS analysis was used. A quadratic regression (weighted 1/concentration) was used to fit calibration curves over the concentration range 1.01-2200 ng/mL with an equation y = ax² + bx + c for free payload. Pharmacokinetic study samples and in vitro stability samples in rat were successfully analyzed by this a hybrid affinity-captured-LC-TOF-MS/MS method. This single platform method is a useful complementary method for the pharmacokinetics study of ADC with valine-citrulline linker at the early drug discovery stage.