Aggregation analysis of pharmaceutical human immunoglobulin preparations using size-exclusion chromatography and analytical ultracentrifugation sedimentation velocity

In the pharmaceutical industry, analysis of soluble aggregates in pharmaceutical formulations is most commonly performed using size-exclusion chromatography (SEC). However, owing to concerns that aggregates can be overlooked by SEC analysis, it has been suggested that its results should be confirmed with orthogonal methods. One of the main alternative methods for SEC is analytical ultracentrifugation sedimentation velocity (AUC-SV), which has been indicated as an important tool for the measurement of protein aggregation. The present study aimed to show that AUC-SV can be effectively applied for the characterization of marketed immunoglobulin pharmaceutical preparations to support the results obtained by SEC. In addition, the present research aimed to assess the appropriateness of two integration approaches for the quantitative analysis of the SEC results. Thus, the aggregates were measured in seven different preparations of human immunoglobulins by AUC-SV and SEC, and the acquired chromatographic data were processed by using either the vertical drop method or the Gaussian skim approach, implemented in the Empower II chromatography data software (Waters, Tokyo, Japan). The results of aggregation measurements performed using AUC-SV were in good agreement with those obtained using SEC. As expected, the Gaussian skim integration approach inherently provided lower estimates of aggregation content than the results of the vertical drop method. The finding of this study confirmed the complementary nature of AUC-SV to SEC for aggregate composition analysis and underscored the important role that the different integration methods can play in the quantitative interpretation of chromatographic results.