Antibody Format and Serum Disposition Govern Ocular Pharmacokinetics of Intravenously Administered Protein Therapeutics

Protein therapeutics have witnessed tremendous use and application in recent years in treatment of various diseases. Predicting efficacy and safety during drug discovery and translational development is a key factor for successful clinical development of these therapies. In general, drug related toxicities are predominantly driven by pharmacokinetic (PK) exposure at off-target sites. This work explores the ocular PK of intravenously administered protein therapeutics to understand impact of antibody format on off-site exposure. Species matched non-binding rabbit antibody proteins (rabFab and rabIgG) were intravenously administered to male New Zealand White rabbits at a single 1 mg bolus dose and exposure was measured up to 3 weeks. As anticipated based on absence of FcRn recycling, rabFab has relatively fast systemic PK (CL-943 mL/day and t(1/2)-1.93 days) compared to rabIgG (CL-18.5 mL/day and t(1/2)-8.93 days). Similarly, rabFab has lower absolute ocular exposure in ocular compartments (e.g., vitreous and aqueous humor) compared to rabIgG, despite higher relative exposures (measured as percent tissue partition in ocular tissues relative to serum, based on C-max and AUC). In general, percent tissue partition based on AUC (in aqueous and vitreous humor) relative to serum exposure were 10.4 and 8.62 for rabFab respectively and 1.11 and 0.64 for rabIgG respectively. This work emphasizes size and format based ocular exposure of intravenously administered protein therapeutics. Findings from this work enable prediction of format based ocular exposure for systemically administered antibody based therapeutics and aid in selection of molecule format for clinical candidate to minimize ocular exposure.

Automated summary

This study investigated the impact of intravenously administered protein therapeutics on ocular PK and found that the antibody format plays a role in off-site exposure. Results showed that rabFab has relatively fast systemic PK and lower ocular exposure, while rabIgG exhibited the opposite trends.