Characterization of drug-product-related impurities and variants of a therapeutic monoclonal antibody by higher energy C-trap dissociation mass spectrometry.

Mass spectrometry (MS) characterization of recombinant monoclonal antibody (mAb) drugs and their degraded and/or post-translationally modified counterparts, drug-product-related impurities and variants, is critical for successful development of biotherapeutics. Specifically in this study, drug-product-related impurities of an anti-Clostridium difficile IgG1 mAb drug substance were profiled by cation-exchange liquid chromatography (CEX) followed by the CEX peaks being fraction-collected for MS characterization. A reversed-phase liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) methodology was developed on a Thermo Q-Exactive orbitrap mass spectrometer for (1) accurate mass measurements of the mAb, its CEX fractionated impurities, and their respective heavy chains and light chains and (2) middle-down LC/MS/MS of the light chains and the heavy chains using higher energy C-trap dissociation (HCD).