Many technological advancements in recent years have enabled companies to shorten time to market, to better understand their manufacturing processes, and to characterize their products well. In BPI’s December 2013 issue (pages 47–50), I reported on the first half of an informal reader survey about those technologies, with commentary from some survey participants and others. This month concludes with my examination of analytical, formulation/fill–finish, and facilities technologies. Analytical Technologies After writing several installments of our new “BPI Lab” series this…
Assays
North, South, East, and West
Electrophoresis is the basis of all blotting methods, and BPI Lab covered it last month (1). Electroblotting is a method for transferring electrophoretically separated proteins or nucleic acids onto a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) or nitrocellulose membrane for permanence using electric current and a transfer buffer solution. This allows for analysts to further study them using probes, ligands, or stains. Capillary blotting is a variation designed to work with capillary electrophoresis. After electrophoresis the following are stacked in cathode-to-anode order: a…
Mathematical Model for Production of Recombinant Antibody 14D9 By Nicotiana tabacum Cell Suspension Batch Culture
Transgenic plants are increasingly considered a competing system for producing high-value recombinant proteins for biomedical and industrial purposes at affordable costs (1). Researchers have shown that molecular farming (or biopharming) is a secure technology that is capable of rendering valuable recombinant proteins free of toxins and animal pathogens in a relatively short time (2,3,4,5,6). Scientists have also demonstrated that most recombinant antibodies produced in plants maintain their functional properties (substantial bioequivalence) as well as do those produced in mammalian cell…
Assay Acceptance Criteria for Multiwell-Plate–Based Biological Potency Assays
For most biopharmaceuticals, potency is assessed in a bioassay by comparing dose–response curves of the test material and a reference standard. As with all analytical techniques, such assays require criteria by which their execution can be judged objectively to be valid, regardless of whether the desired or expected result is obtained for the test sample. PRODUCT FOCUS: BIOLOGICSPROCESSFOCUS: R&D, QCWHO SHOULD READ: PRODUCT AND PROCESS DEVELOPMENT, ANALYTICAL, QCKEYWORDS: IMMUNOASSAYS, POTENCY ASSAYS, PRODUCT RELEASE, REFERENCE STANDARDS, CONTROL SAMPLES, SAMPLE ACCEPTANCELEVEL: ADVANCED…
Quality Risk Assessment and Management Strategies for Biopharmaceutical Companies
You’ve probably been hearing a lot about risk assessment in recent months. Indeed, some 15 times more articles have been printed referencing the concept over the past year relative to a 12-month period just three years ago. That truly represents a geometric progression. Unfortunately, very few authors have been able to disambiguate the different methods or provide insight into this time-tested, multiple-industry philosophy that at its core uses good science to make better decisions. When we undertake the challenge to…
Robots in the Laboratory
Whether cell-based or molecular biology focused, most assays performed in biopharmaceutical laboratories involve liquid solutions. Increasingly, automated liquid handlers (laboratory robotics) are demonstrating utility in these labs, especially for high-throughput screening and optimization of cell culture media, chromatography conditions, formulations, and so on. Some experts say that screening 100,000 samples/day will soon become routine. But the robots haven’t condemned all manual pipettes to the trash heap — far from it. With multichannel and electronic pipettes improving throughput and reproducibility of…
Biological Assay Qualification Using Design of Experiments
In 2012, the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) published a complementary set of three guidance documents on the development, analysis, and validation of biological assays (1,2,3). USP chapter recommends a novel, systematic approach for bioassay validation using design of experiments (DoE) that incorporates robustness of critical parameters (2). Use of DoE to establish robustness has been reported (4,–5), but to our knowledge its use in qualification or validation protocols for assessing assay accuracy, precision, and linearity is not described in literature.…
High-Throughput Chromatography Screenings for Modulating Charge-Related Isoform Patterns
Monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) are an important class of biopharmaceuticals and are widely used to treat a variety of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and blood disorders. Antibodies are very complex proteins that show a high degree of microheterogeneities, including charge-, hydrophobicity- and size-related variances (1). Such variants can arise during any stage in a manufacturing process or storage as a result of enzymatic or nonenzymatic processes (2). Particular antibody variants that may affect the in vitro and in vivo…
Amplifying the Possibilities
Polymerases are natural enzymes that are vital to nucleic acid synthesis: DNA polymerase for replication of deoxyribonucleic acid and RNA polymerase for replication of ribonucleic acid. Thus all living things make and use polymerases of their own. But in 1969, the University of Wisconsin’s Thomas D. Brock and Hudson Freeze identified a new species of extremophilic bacterium thriving at 160 °F (70 °C) in a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. In time, heat-tolerant polymerase isolated from Thermus aquaticus (Taq)…
Antibodies, Bioassays, and Cells
It’s no surprise that immunochemistry forms a broad and solid basis of biopharmaceutical analytical laboratory work. Immunochemicals include antibiotics and antigens, nucleic acids and nucleotides, enzymes, lipids, antioxidants, probes and dyes, and proteins and peptides. Available from companies such as Advanced Immunochemical, Immundiagnostik, Lampire Biological Laboratories, and Rockland Antibodies and Assays, their many uses include antibody isotyping and fragmentation. Adjuvants, buffers, assay kits, target biomolecules, and phage-display systems support those applications. Because background and off-target effects complicate the study of…