Gyrolab Spin Blog: pharmacokinetics

Target-specific reagents and immunoassay formats smoothen validation and transfer between CMC, preclinical, and clinical applications, and also to a CRO

Robust, accurate, precise, and time effective ligand binding assay platforms are crucial for the development of advanced bioassays for analyzing therapeutic antibody mixtures due to the inherent complexity of these drugs. This is why Symphogen A/S, Denmark chose Gyrolab system to develop assays to support chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) release and stability programs, and pharmacokinetics preclinical and clinical studies on Sym015, a novel anti-cancer biotherapeutic comprising two humanized monoclonal antibodies (mAbs).

The value of affinity determination in assay development and throughout drug development

The drive to lower drug dosage, improve healthcare and reduce costs has lead to the search for therapeutic antibodies with high target affinity. As a consequence, optimizing and monitoring the specificity and affinity of drug candidates to the target molecule has become critical in the development of therapeutic antibodies – from early screening of hybridomas or recombinant antibodies from phage display libraries, to affinity maturation and antibody engineering to improve the efficacy, safety and manufacturability of the final antibody drug product. Characterizing affinity is also important when selecting reagents for quantitative assays or assessing drug product activity in manufacturing release tests. The question is, how can high affinity be measured in the best possible way?

Minimize incubation times with flow-through immunoassays

Matrix interference can be a major challenge in the development of immunoassays to study a number of disease states. Kathi Williams and her colleagues at Genentech Inc., USA, experienced considerable problems with matrix interference when developing an ELISA for Phase III studies of a humanized monoclonal antibody when a new patient group was introduced. The solution was to transfer the assay to the Gyrolab platform that, thanks to its flow-through technology helped minimizing matrix effects by reducing the incubation times with the capture reagent antibody.

Singlicate Gyrolab immunoassays prove their worth (again)

In a previous post, ‘How to get it right first time’, we looked at the reliability and reproducibility of Gyrolab™ assays that lead to the idea of running singlicates instead of duplicates (Clark et al, 2016). This publication inspired Hao Jiang and colleagues in a group based at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Princeton, USA to apply Gyrolab technology to run assays of their monoclonal antibody in singlicate in a clinical study. They were encouraged by the results.

Guidance with immunoassays from initial assay design to final validation

The drive to achieve regulatory approval of protein-based drugs quickly and efficiently demands methods that can deliver reliable data to support studies in pharmacokinetics, toxicokinetics, pharmacodynamics, biomarker analysis, and immunogenicity. This need has powered the development of a wide and somewhat perplexing range of ligand binding assays (LBAs) and technology platforms designed to function in a regulated environment, from non-clinical studies to post approval. Added to that, developing an assay that is ready for validation can be a real challenge. If you need guidance in this area then you would do well to read ‘Ligand Binding Assays in the Regulated Bioanalytical Laboratory’, a book chapter authored by Johanna Mora , Charles Hottenstein, and Binodh DeSilva at Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline (1).

The extreme reliability of Gyrolab assays

Whatever your needs in immunoassays, you will almost certainly appreciate an assay that consistently delivers high precision and accuracy. Scientists at Pfizer have reported a retrospective study of pharmacokinetics (PK) data that highlights the reliability of Gyrolab assays.

Immunoassays support research by coping with a difficult matrix

A number of serious eye diseases, such as neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic macular edema, involve increase in the leakage of blood vessels in the eye. This is caused by vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and while such diseases can be treated with protein drugs that neutralize VEGF, the drugs must be administered frequently. A research group has developed an elegant approach that significantly extends the half-life of the drugs. This exciting work involved handling a challenge that is common to much of eye research – running immunoassays on precious samples in difficult matrices.

Gyrolab xP workstation generates high quality data faster

As the pace of drug development increases, so does the demand on rapid and efficient generation of bioanalytical data in a regulated setting. In testing six ligand-binding assays on Gyrolab™ xP workstation, Rong Liu and her colleagues at Bristol-Myers Squibb have found that the system delivers the performance they need. This included high run and incurred sample reanalysis (ISR) pass rates for 5000 samples in a fraction of the time required for non-automated plate-based methods.

A generic detection reagent makes all the difference

Pharmacokinetic (PK) studies of therapeutic proteins in early preclinical development demand great flexibility in bioanalytical methods. This is a real challenge during lead candidate selection when, for example, limited amounts of specific reagents must be labeled for immunoassays. Gregor Jordan and his colleagues at the Pharma Research & Early Development (pRED) department at Roche in Munich, Germany saw the advantages of transferring their ELISAs to the Gyrolab™ platform – low reagent consumption, semi-automation and fast assay turnaround – but wanted to go one step further in conserving critical resources. They therefore developed a generic detection reagent that would allow them to use the same antibody reagents on both ELISA and Gyrolab platforms.

Gyros’ technology overcomes matrix effects in a Phase III PK assay

It is not unusual for a pharmacokinetics assay used early on in a study proves to lack the robustness needed to see the drug candidate through to more advanced clinical studies. A team at Genentech experienced just that and they solved the problem by transferring their ELISA to the Gyrolab platform.