Analytical Quality by Design as applied to the development of a SEC-HPLC platform procedure for the determination of monoclonal antibody purity without mobile phase additives

This work presents the application of AQbD principles to the development of a size exclusion chromatography (SEC) HPLC procedure for the determination of monoclonal antibody (mAb) product purity using state-of-the-art column technology available via the Waters™ XBridge Premier Protein SEC column. Analytical Quality by Design (AQbD) emphasizes a systematic, risk-based lifecycle approach to analytical procedure development based on sound statistical methodologies. It has recently become increasingly recommended by regulatory agencies as a response to the need for greater efficiency, improved reliability, and increased robustness among modern analytical procedures in the pharmaceutical industry. Use of an Analytical Target Profile (ATP) and formal risk assessments informed the application of Design of Experiments (DoE) to optimize this analytical procedure, as well as assess its robustness and ruggedness. Importantly, our ruggedness results demonstrated the transferability of this procedure between two laboratories within the Catalent Biologics Global Network. Application of this analytical procedure as a platform approach for evaluating mAb purity is expected to support expedited, first-in-human timelines of mAb molecules by enabling great quantitative performance with simple mobile phase buffer compositions. Taken together, this case study demonstrates the utility of adopting AQbD principles in analytical procedure development.