A general Fc engineering platform for the next generation of antibody therapeutics

Rationale: Fc engineering has become the focus of antibody drug development. The current mutagenesis and in silico protein design methods are confined by the limited throughput and high cost, while the high-throughput phage display and yeast display technologies are not suitable for screening glycosylated Fc variants. Here we developed a mammalian cell display-based Fc engineering platform. Methods: By using mammalian cell display and next generation sequencing, we screened millions of Fc variants for optimized affinity and specificity for Fc gamma RIIIa or Fc gamma RIIb. The identified Fc variants with improved binding to Fc gamma RIIIa were substituted into trastuzumab and rituximab and the effector function of antibodies were examined in the PBMC-based assay. On the other hand, the identified Fc variants with selectively enhanced Fc gamma RIIb binding were applied to CD40 agonist antibody and the activities of the antibodies were measured on different cell assays. The immunostimulatory activity of CD40 antibodies was also evaluated by OVA-specific CD8(+) T cell response model in Fc gamma R/CD40-humanized mice. Results: Using this approach, we screened millions of Fc variant and successfully identified several novel Fc variants with enhanced Fc gamma RIIIa or Fc gamma RIIb binding. These identified Fc variants displayed a dramatic increase in antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity in PBMC-based assay. Novel variants with selectively enhanced Fc gamma RIIb binding were also identified. CD40 agonist antibodies substituted with these Fc variants displayed activity more potent than the parental antibody in the in vitro and in vivo models. Conclusions: This approach increased the throughput of Fc variant screening from thousands to millions magnitude, enabled screening variants containing multiple mutations and could be integrated with glycoengineering technology, represents an ideal platform for Fc engineering. The initial efforts demonstrated the capability of the platform and the novel Fc variants could be substituted into nearly any antibody for the next generation of antibody therapeutics.

Automated summary

Fc engineering has become a focus in antibody drug development. A mammalian cell display-based platform was developed to screen millions of Fc variants for optimized binding to Fc gamma RIIIa or Fc gamma RIIb. Novel Fc variants with enhanced binding and improved effector function were successfully identified.