Quantitative determination of human IgA subclasses and their Fc‐glycosylation patterns in plasma by using a peptide analogue internal standard and ultra‐high‐performance liquid chromatography/triple quadrupole mass spectrometry

Rationale Glycosylation on immunoglobulins is important for the immune function. In this study, we developed and validated a method for the absolute quantification of IgA subclasses and relative quantification of IgA‐Fc glycopeptides by using affinity purification and ultrahigh‐performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC/MS/MS). Only micro‐volumes of plasma were required from each sample and we also applied the method to discover IgA and IgA‐glycopeptide profiles in patients with chronic kidney diseases and IgA nephropathy. Methods Peptide M affinity beads were used to purify IgA, and a cost‐effective peptide analogue was added as internal standard. With an efficient on‐bead digestion process, purified samples were analyzed by UHPLC/MS/MS in multiple reaction monitoring mode. Results Correlation coefficients were greater than 0.999 for the IgA1 and IgA2 calibration curves and greater than 0.994 for glycopeptide regression curves. Intraday and interday precisions for IgA1 and IgA2 were <1.6% and <5.1% RSD, respectively. Intraday and interday accuracies ranged from 102.6 to 114.9% and 103.5 to 113.5% for IgA1 and IgA2, respectively. Stabilities of IgA1 and IgA2 at −80°C for 7 to 15 days ranged from 96.0 to 109.4%, respectively. The Pearson's correlation coefficient was 0.916 when comparing the IgA quantification results of the 30 clinical samples by using ELISAs and the developed UHPLC/MS/MS method. Compared with healthy controls, IgA and IgA‐glycopeptides showed different profiles in patients with chronic kidney diseases and IgA nephropathy. Conclusions The developed method showed good validation results, and the absolute quantification results of IgA correlated with those from ELISA. The pilot application study showed that IgA and IgA‐glycopeptides can be potential biomarker candidates for kidney diseases, and more clinical sample applications are worth investigating.