Monitoring physical stability and aggregation of biotherapeutics can be a major challenge for drug developers.
This is due in part to the fact that aggregation can occur at very different stages in the biomanufacturing and development processes and can also manifest itself in very different ways. Low host viability, low productivity, the presence of inclusion bodies and the development of opalescent solutions or precipitates are clear indications of stability issues.
With these challenges in mind, we have developed a proprietary suite of predictive models designed to assess the aggregation potential of your monoclonal antibody. Our in silico aggregation assessment tool uses sequence and structural algorithms to identify motifs with a potential for aggregation.
Below is a comparison between the in silico aggregation prediction of 6 monoclonal antibodies (wild type and variants) as compared to the experimentally determined levels. Lonza’s tool correctly predicted 6 out of 6 mAbs on the propensity to aggregate.
Variant | Predicted Aggregation Risk |
---|---|
WT | Low |
1 | Low |
2 | Low |
3 | High |
4 | High |
5 | High |