A Purification Strategy Utilizing Hydrophobic Interaction Chromatography to Obtain Homogeneous Species from a Site-Specific Antibody Drug Conjugate Produced by AJICAP™ First Generation

In recent years, site-specific antibody drug conjugates (ADC)s have been in great demand because they have an expanded therapeutic index compared with conventional ADCs. AJICAP™ technology is a chemical conjugation platform to obtain site-specific ADCs through the use of a class of Fc-affinity compounds. Promising results from early technology development studies led to further investigation of AJICAP™ ADC materials to obtain site-specific and homogeneous drug antibody ratio (DAR) ADCs. Here we report site-specific conjugation followed by a preparative hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC) purification strategy to obtain purified "DAR = 1.0" and "DAR = 2.0" AJICAP™ ADC materials. Optimization of the mobile phase conditions and resin achieved a high recovery rate. In vitro biological assay demonstrated the target selective activity for purified homogeneous DAR ADCs. These results indicate the ability of a HIC purification strategy to provide "DAR = 1.0" and "DAR = 2.0" AJICAP™ ADCs with considerable potency and target selectivity.