Hollow fiber flow field-flow fractionation and size-exclusion chromatography with multi-angle light scattering detection: A complementary approach in biopharmaceutical industry

•Characterization of aggregates in therapeutic monoclonal antibodies.•Hollow fiber flow field-flow fractionation of high molecular weight protein aggregates.•A complementary approach based on SEC and HF5 for the analysis of therapeutic protein aggregates.

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are promising reagents both for the manufacture of drug substances and for their employment as a drug themselves, but to be approved for utilization, according to FDA recommendations and WHO guidelines, they have to undergo verifications regarding their purity, stability and percentage of aggregates. Moreover, stability tests of lots have to be performed in order to verify molecular size distribution over time and lot-to-lot consistency. Recent works in literature have highlighted the need for suitable, sensitive and reliable complementary analytical techniques for the characterization of mAbs and quantification of aggregates. Size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) is the reference technique in the biopharmaceutical industry for its robustness, high performance and simple use; however it presents some limitations especially toward the separation and detection of aggregates with high molecular weight. On the other hand, flow field-flow fractionation (F4) in its miniaturized version (hollow fiber flow field-flow fractionation, HF5) shows comparable performances with interesting additional advantages: a broad size range, gentle separation mechanism with low dilution factor and higher sensitivity. To propose HF5 as a complementary technique for evaluating aggregates’ content in mAbs samples, a comparative study of both SEC and HF5 performances has been made. In this work, SEC and HF5 were coupled with UV and multi-angle light scattering detection and employed first in separating standard samples of proteins mixture used as a sample model. Then, a screening of mobile phases and an evaluation of separation performances was performed on a therapeutic mAbs formulation, demonstrating the complementarities between SEC and HF5 and their possible use as a separative platform approach for the characterization and quality control of protein drugs.