Monnet Céline, Jorieux Sylvie, Souyris Nathalie, Zaki Ouafa, Jacquet Alexandra, Fournier Nathalie, Crozet Fabien, de Romeuf Christophe, Bouayadi Khalil, Urbain Rémi, Behrens Christian K, Mondon Philippe, Fontayne Alexandre
LFB Biotechnologies; Lille, France.
MilleGen; Labège, France.
MAbs. 2014 Mar-Apr;6(2):422-36. doi: 10.4161/mabs.27854. Epub 2014 Jan 15.
While glyco-engineered monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) with improved antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) are reaching the market, extensive efforts have also been made to improve their pharmacokinetic properties to generate biologically superior molecules. Most therapeutic mAbs are human or humanized IgG molecules whose half-life is dependent on the neonatal Fc receptor FcRn. FcRn reduces IgG catabolism by binding to the Fc domain of endocytosed IgG in acidic lysosomal compartments, allowing them to be recycled into the blood. Fc-engineered mAbs with increased FcRn affinity resulted in longer in vivo half-life in animal models, but also in healthy humans. These Fc-engineered mAbs were obtained by alanine scanning, directed mutagenesis or in silico approach of the FcRn binding site. In our approach, we applied a random mutagenesis technology (MutaGen™) to generate mutations evenly distributed over the whole Fc sequence of human IgG1. IgG variants with improved FcRn-binding were then isolated from these Fc-libraries using a pH-dependent phage display selection process. Two successive rounds of mutagenesis and selection were performed to identify several mutations that dramatically improve FcRn binding. Notably, many of these mutations were unpredictable by rational design as they were located distantly from the FcRn binding site, validating our random molecular approach. When produced on the EMABling(®) platform allowing effector function increase, our IgG variants retained both higher ADCC and higher FcRn binding. Moreover, these IgG variants exhibited longer half-life in human FcRn transgenic mice. These results clearly demonstrate that glyco-engineering to improve cytotoxicity and protein-engineering to increase half-life can be combined to further optimize therapeutic mAbs.
随着具有改善的抗体依赖性细胞介导的细胞毒性(ADCC)的糖基工程单克隆抗体(mAb)进入市场,人们也付出了巨大努力来改善其药代动力学特性,以产生生物学上更优越的分子。大多数治疗性mAb是人类或人源化IgG分子,其半衰期取决于新生儿Fc受体FcRn。FcRn通过在酸性溶酶体区室中与内吞的IgG的Fc结构域结合来降低IgG的分解代谢,使其能够再循环到血液中。具有增加的FcRn亲和力的Fc工程化mAb在动物模型以及健康人类中均具有更长的体内半衰期。这些Fc工程化mAb是通过对FcRn结合位点进行丙氨酸扫描、定向诱变或计算机方法获得的。在我们的方法中,我们应用了一种随机诱变技术(MutaGen™)来产生均匀分布在人IgG1整个Fc序列上的突变。然后使用pH依赖性噬菌体展示选择过程从这些Fc文库中分离出具有改善的FcRn结合的IgG变体。进行了两轮连续的诱变和选择,以鉴定出几种可显著改善FcRn结合的突变。值得注意的是,这些突变中的许多通过合理设计是无法预测的,因为它们距离FcRn结合位点较远,这验证了我们的随机分子方法。当在允许效应子功能增加的EMABling(®)平台上产生时,我们的IgG变体保留了更高的ADCC和更高的FcRn结合。此外,这些IgG变体在人FcRn转基因小鼠中表现出更长的半衰期。这些结果清楚地表明,可以将改善细胞毒性的糖基工程和增加半衰期的蛋白质工程相结合,以进一步优化治疗性mAb。