Sensitive, Rapid, Robust, and Reproducible Workflow for Host Cell Protein Profiling in Biopharmaceutical Process Development

There is a growing industry and regulatory need to detect host cell protein (HCP) impurities in the production of protein biopharmaceuticals, as certain HCPs can impact product stability, safety, and efficacy, even at low levels. In some cases, regulatory agencies require the identification and the quantification of HCPs in drug products (DPs) for risk assessment, and this is an active and growing topic of conversation in the industry and amongst regulators. In this study, we developed a sensitive, robust, and reproducible workflow for HCP detection and quantification in a significantly shorter turnaround time than that previously reported using an Evosep ONE LC system coupled to an Orbitrap Fusion Lumos mass spectrometer. Because of its fast turnaround time, this HCP workflow can be integrated into process development for the high-throughput (60 samples analyzed per day) identification of HCPs. The ability to rapidly measure HCPs and follow their clearance throughout the downstream process can be used to pinpoint sources of HCP contamination, which can be used to optimize biopharmaceutical production to minimize HCP levels. Analysis of the NIST monoclonal antibody reference material using the rapid HCP profiling workflow detected the largest number of HCPs reported to date, underscoring an improvement in performance along with an increased throughput. The HCP workflow can be readily implemented and adapted for different purposes to guide biopharmaceutical process development and enable better risk assessment of HCPs in drug substances and DPs.