The Use of a Shear Device to Monitor the Stability of a Single-Chain Variable Fragment (scFv) Fusion Protein MFECP1

Abstract

Antibody based drugs are increasingly being used to treat a vast array of diseases because of their unique affinity to target specific antigen proteins on the surfaces of target cancer cells. Fusions of antibodies and conjugated biopharmaceuticals are progressively being used as this gives the opportunity to target other cytotoxic molecules to unwanted cells. It is critical to ensure these types of drug products are not fragile or uneconomical to produce at a large scale. A very small amount of precious protein solution can be characterised in an Ultra scale-down (USD) shear device to uncover if fusion proteins are prone to shear stress. This article presents how the purified and deglycosylated form of the MFECP1 fusion protein was quantified with an ELISA from 700-50 ng/ml, with a +/- 10% deviation in the standard curve. It also describes how the same MFECP1 fusion protein was analysed to establish the optimum experimental control conditions that were required to observe changes due to hydrodynamic-associated degradation in a shear device. Lastly, it looks at how a first order kinetic relationship can be used to model the rate of MFECP1 fusion protein degradation and how this was used to quantify the rate of protein loss during different shear environments with and without air/liquid interfaces.