In vitro functional characterization of biosimilar therapeutic antibodies

Roadmap for Drug Product Development and Manufacturing of Biologics

Therapeutic biology encompasses different modalities, and their manufacturing processes may be vastly different. However, there are many similarities that run across the different modalities during the drug product (DP) development process and manufacturing. Similarities include the need for Quality Target Product Profile (QTTP), analytical development, formulation development, container/closure studies, drug product process development, manufacturing and technical requirements set out by numerous regulatory documents such as the FDA, EMA, and ICH for pharmaceuticals for human use and other country specific requirements. While there is a plethora of knowledge on studies needed for development of a drug product, there is no specific guidance set out in a phase dependent manner delineating what studies should be completed in alignment with the different phases of clinical development from pre-clinical through commercialization. Because of this reason, we assembled a high-level drug product development and manufacturing roadmap. The roadmap is applicable across the different modalities with the intention of providing a unified framework from early phase development to commercialization of biologic drug products.

Flow cytometry: A powerful analytical technique for characterizing the biological function of biotherapeutics and biosimilars

Biotherapeutics are complex molecules with therapeutic activity produced through biotechnology and/or genetic engineering. These medicines have clinical applications in diagnostic procedures and therapies for many disorders, including cancer, autoimmunity, and chronic degenerative diseases. Most biotherapeutics are expensive and sometimes unaffordable for low-income patients suffering from cancer or chronic illness. Biosimilars emerged in the 2000 s after patents of many innovative biotherapeutic products expired. The Biosimilar market is growing fast and demands reliable technologies for analyzing the physicochemical properties and bioactivity of products. A big challenge for biosimilar development is to prove comparable bioactivity, safety, efficacy, and toxicity profile as the innovator product. Bioactivity assessment can utilize different analytical techniques such as ELISA, flow cytometry, and surface plasmon resonance. Flow cytometry is a versatile analytical tool that can be used for the development of quantitative, reproducible, and accurate protocols suitable for routine evaluation of bioactivity in-vitro. Nevertheless, flow cytometry has been very scarcely used in comparability evaluation between biosimilar versus an originator product. Here, we review potential applications of flow cytometry to carry out functional bioassays of biotherapeutics or biosimilars.

Assessment of Functional Characterization and Comparability of Biotherapeutics: a Review

The development of monoclonal antibody (mAb) biosimilars is a complex process. The key to their successful development and commercialization is an in-depth understanding of the key product attributes that impact safety and efficacy and the strategies to control them. Functional assessment of mAb is a crucial part of the comparability of biopharmaceutical drugs. The development of a relevant and robust functional assay requires an interdisciplinary approach and sufficient flexibility to balance regulatory concerns as well as dynamics and variability during the manufacturing process. Although many advanced tools are available to study and compare the potency and bioactivity of the protein, most of these techniques suffer from major shortcomings that limit their routine use. These include the complexity of the task, establishment of the relevance of the chosen method with the mechanism of action (MOA) of the biosimilar, cost and extended time of analysis, and often the ambiguity in interpretation of the resulting data. To overcome or to address these challenges, the use of multiple orthogonal state-of-the-art techniques is a necessary prerequisite.