Assessment of immunogenicity and drug activity in patient sera by flow-induced dispersion analysis

Biopharmaceuticals have revolutionized the treatment of many diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune disorders. These complex entities provide unique advantages like high specificity towards their target. Unfortunately, biopharmaceuticals are also prone to elicit undesired immunogenic responses (immunogenicity), compromising treatment efficacy as well as patient safety due to severe adverse effects including life threatening conditions. Current immunogenicity assays are hampered by immobilization procedures, complicated sample pre-treatment, or rely on cell-based methods which all prevent reliable and continuous monitoring of patients. In this work, we present Flow Induced Dispersion Analysis (FIDA) for assessment of immunogenicity and drug activity in serum samples from arthritis patients receiving adalimumab. FIDA is a first principle technique for size-based characterization of biomolecules and their complexes under biologically relevant conditions. The FIDA methodology rely on an absolute and quantitative readout (hydrodynamic radius) thus reducing the need for positive and negative controls. Here, FIDA is applied for evaluating active adalimumab in serum by studying the interaction with its target tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). We report proof of principle for a quantitative approach for stratifying patients exhibiting presence of neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibodies based on their individual drug activity pattern. Further, it can be applied to any biopharmaceutical having soluble drug targets and it holds potential in a companion diagnostics setting.