Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are dominating the biopharmaceutical field due to the fact of their high specificity in the treatment of diverse diseases. Nevertheless, mAbs are very complex glycoproteins exhibiting several macro- and microheterogeneities that may affect their safety, quality, and efficacy. This complexity is very challenging for mAbs development, formulation, and quality control. To tackle the quality issue, a combination of multiple analytical approaches is necessary. In this perspective, capillary electrophoresis has gained considerable interest over the last decade due to the fact of its complementary features to chromatographic approaches. This review provides an overview of the strategies of mAbs and derivatives analysis by capillary electrophoresis hyphenated to ultraviolet, fluorescence, and mass spectrometry detection. The main sample preparation approaches used for mAb analytical characterization (i.e., intact, middle-up/down, and bottom-up) are detailed. The different electrophoretic modes used as well as integrated analysis approaches (sample preparation and separation) are critically discussed.

A new method for monolith synthesis and anchoring inside cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) microchannels in a single step is proposed. It is shown that type I photoinitiators, typically used in a polymerization mixture to generate free radicals during monolith synthesis, can simultaneously act as type II photoinitiators and react with the plastic surface through hydrogen abstraction. This mechanism is used to “photograft” poly(ethylene glycol) methacrylate (PEGMA) on COC surfaces. Contact angle measurements were used to observe the changes in surface hydrophilicity when increasing initiator concentration and irradiation duration. The ability of type I photoinitiators to synthesize and anchor a monolith inside COC microchannels in a single step was proved through SEM observations. Different concentrations of photoinitiators were tried. Finally, electrochromatographic separations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were realized to illustrate the beneficial effect of anchoring on chromatographic performances. The versatility of the method was demonstrated with two widely used photoinitiators: benzoin methyl ether (BME) and azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN).