Characterization of an antibody-drug conjugate by hydrophilic interaction chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry

Brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) is a cysteine-linked antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) used in the treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). In this study, the drug payload and glycan modifications of this ADC were simultaneously characterized using a unique LC-MS middle-up analysis, involving hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC). This work demonstrates that HILIC is an effective and complementary analytical technique to reversed phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) for subunit-level characterization of immuno-conjugates.