Quantification of a pegylated interferon-alpha2a product by a customised and validated reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography method.

There is increasing development of pegylated proteins as clinical products for therapeutic interventions in human disease. Quantification of such products relies on appropriately calibrated traditional methods, including reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). However, currently available pharmacopoeia calibrants, e.g., chemical reference substances (CRS), are highly purified non-pegylated proteins of known concentration. These are uncertain to be suitable for calibration purposes where the precise quantification of the mass of pegylated proteins, often heterogeneous with respect to polyethylene glycol (PEG) chain size, structure, attachment sites and isomer numbers and proportions, is required. In this study, a customised RP-HPLC method was developed and validated for the analysis of a pegylated IFN-α2a product having a linear 20kDa PEG chain (PEG20-IFN-α2a; Reiferon Retard(®)). Since the PEG20 moiety generated no signal at the detection wavelength of 210nm, the concentration of the base IFN-α2a molecules in PEG-IFN-α2a could be determined. By calculating the UV absorbance at 210nm of peak areas in their respective chromatographic profiles, a high correlation (r(2) ≥ 0.995) of PEG20-IFN-α2a concentrations with equal concentrations of the CRS of IFN-α2a, or of a well-characterised PEG20-IFN-α2a internal reference substance (IRS) was found. This finding confirmed the suitability of this CRS as a primary calibrant for mass determinations of PEG20-IFN-α2a by the customised RP-HPLC method. Application of this method to the quantitative analysis of 10 batches of Reiferon Retard(®) yielded accurate and consistent results, indicating its utility for mass determinations of current and future Reiferon Retard(®) batches.