Approaches to expand the conventional toolbox for discovery and selection of antibodies with drug-like physicochemical properties

ABSTRACT

Antibody drugs should exhibit not only high-binding affinity for their target antigens but also favorable physicochemical drug-like properties. Such drug-like biophysical properties are essential for the successful development of antibody drug products. The traditional approaches used in antibody drug development require significant experimentation to produce, optimize, and characterize many candidates. Therefore, it is attractive to integrate new methods that can optimize the process of selecting antibodies with both desired target-binding and drug-like biophysical properties. Here, we summarize a selection of techniques that can complement the conventional toolbox used to de-risk antibody drug development. These techniques can be integrated at different stages of the antibody development process to reduce the frequency of physicochemical liabilities in antibody libraries during initial discovery and to co-optimize multiple antibody features during early-stage antibody engineering and affinity maturation. Moreover, we highlight biophysical and computational approaches that can be used to predict physical degradation pathways relevant for long-term storage and in-use stability to reduce the need for extensive experimentation.

KEYWORDS:

• Antibodies
• mAbs
• developability
• manufacturability
• drug-like properties
• early-stage screening
• candidate screening

Acknowledgments

Images in the manuscript were created with BioRender.com.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

H.L.S. acknowledges the funding from the special research fund of Ghent University, grant number BOF/STA/202109/034. P.S. is a Royal Society University Research Fellow (URF/R1/201461).