Analysis of antibody-drug conjugates by comprehensive on-line two-dimensional hydrophobic interaction chromatography x reversed phase liquid chromatography hyphenated to high resolution mass spectrometry. I - Optimization of separation conditions.

Antibody-drug-conjugates (ADCs) manufacturing leads to a mixture of species which needs to be characterized during development and for further quality control. The coupling of on-line HIC x RPLC to high resolution mass spectrometry can be considered as a very efficient analytical method, providing extensive information on ADC sample, within a reduced time scale. Our intention in this first paper is to present the approach used to rationally optimize the numerous conditions that can affect the quality of the 2D-separation. HIC and RPLC conditions were therefore optimized to prevent salt precipitation due to solvent mixing and to enhance sensitivity, while limiting the total analysis time. We demonstrated that adding salt in the sample solvent before HIC injection allows a significant peak shape improvement. The gradient profile was also carefully optimized in both dimensions, leading to a two-step gradient in HIC and bracketed gradient in RPLC. This study shows that on-line HIC x RPLC hyphenated to high resolution mass spectrometry is a useful method to obtain rapid and extensive structural information on the peaks observed in the first HIC dimension, thereby leading, in a single step requiring 75min, to the precise determination of the average drug-to-antibody ratio (DAR) by HIC as well as the knowledge of the drug load distribution for a particular DAR. The structural characterization of ADC fragments by RPLC-QTOF will be discussed in the second part of this two-part series.