Viral diseases represent a major public health concerns and ever-present risks for developing into future pandemics. Antiviral antibody therapeutics, either alone or in combination with other therapies, emerged as valuable preventative and treatment options, including during global emergencies. Here we will discuss polyclonal and monoclonal antiviral antibody therapies, focusing on the unique biochemical and physiological properties that make them well-suited as therapeutic agents. We will describe the methods of antibody characterization and potency assessment throughout development, highlighting similarities and differences between polyclonal and monoclonal products as appropriate. In addition, we will consider the benefits and challenges of antiviral antibodies when used in combination with other antibodies or other types of antiviral therapeutics. Lastly, we will discuss novel approaches to the characterization and development of antiviral antibodies and identify areas that would benefit from additional research.

Over 160 therapeutic and in vivo diagnostic monoclonal antibodies have been approved by the US FDA since the first monoclonal antibody, muromonab, was approved in 1986. Approximately 42% of these approvals were for the treatment or in vivo diagnosis of oncology indications, although some products are no longer marketed. This review will look at the history of monoclonal antibody development and approvals, discuss current antibody-based modalities, regulatory considerations for engineering approaches, critical quality attributes for different modalities, immunogenicity of mAbs across oncology products, and the future directions for development of therapeutic and diagnostic monoclonal antibody-based products.

Monoclonal antibodies are important tools in research and since the 1990s have been an important therapeutic class targeting a wide variety of diseases. Earlier methods of mAb production relied exclusively on the lengthy process of making hybridomas. The advent of phage display technology introduced an alternative approach for mAb production. A potential concern with this approach is its complete dependence on an in vitro selection process, which may result in selection of V_H-V_L pairs normally eliminated during the in vivo selection process. The diversity of V_H-V_L pairs selected from phage display libraries relative to an endogenous response is unknown. To address these questions, we constructed a panel of hybridomas and a phage display library using the spleen of a single tetanus toxoid-immunized mouse and compared the diversity of the immune response generated using each technique. Surprisingly, the tetanus toxoid-specific antibodies produced by the hybridoma library exhibited a higher degree of V_H-V_L genetic diversity than their phage display-derived counterparts. Furthermore, the overlap among the V-genes from each library was very limited. Consistent with the notion that accumulation of many small DNA changes lead to increased antigen specificity and affinity, the phage clones displayed substantial micro-heterogeneity. Contrary to previous reports, we found that antigen specificity against tetanus toxoid is encoded by both Vκ and V_H genes. Finally, the phage-derived tetanus-specific clones had a lower binding affinity than the hybridomas, a phenomenon thought to be the result of random pairing of the V-genes.

The naïve antibody repertoire is initially dependent upon the number of germline V(D)J genes and the ability of recombined heavy and light chains to pair. Individual VH and VL genes are not equally represented in naïve mature B cells, suggesting that positive and negative selection also shape the antibody repertoire. Among the three member murine Vκ10 L chain family, the Vκ10C gene is under-represented in the antibody repertoire. Although it is structurally functional and accessible to both transcriptional and recombination machinery, the Vκ10C promoter is inefficient in pre-B cell lines and productive Vκ10C rearrangements are lost as development progresses from pre-B cells through mature B cells. This study examined VH/Vκ10 pairing, promoter mutations, Vκ10 transcript levels and receptor editing as possible factors that are responsible for loss of productive Vκ10C rearrangements in developing B cells. We demonstrate that the loss of Vκ10C expression is not due to an inability to pair with H chains, but is likely due to a combination of other factors. Levels of mRNA are low in sorted pre-B cells and undetectable in B cells. Mutation of a single base in the three prime region of the Vκ10C promoter increases Vκ10C promoter function in pre-B cell lines. Pre-B and B cells harbor disproportionate levels of receptor-edited productive Vκ10C rearrangements. Our findings suggest that the weak Vκ10C promoter initially limits the amount of available Vκ10C L chain for pairing with H chains, resulting in sub-threshold levels of cell surface B cell receptors, insufficient tonic signaling and subsequent receptor editing to limit the numbers of Vκ10C-expressing B cells emigrating from the bone marrow to the periphery.

This workshop report summarizes the presentations, workshop session outcome, and the speaker panel discussions held at the PDA Biosimilars Workshop on 27-28 September 2018 in Washington, DC. This format of this workshop was deliberately selected with an expectation to deliver a post-workshop paper for current best practices and still-existing challenges for sponsors. The event was co-chaired by Dr. Stephan Krause (AstraZeneca Biologics) and Dr. Emanuela Lacana (CDER/FDA) and was attended by 140 agency and industry representatives. The workshop was separated into three major sessions (P1 - Regulatory Perspective; P2 - Challenges in Biosimilar Development; P3 - Demonstrating Analytical Similarity). Each of those three sessions started with agency/industry presentations and then split into a two roundtable discussion groups, instructed to record answers to the same questions which were provided to all participants one week prior to the event. This paper provides consolidated answers to specific case studies for current challenges to sponsors and agencies. In addition, the panel discussion notes following each breakout roundtable session as well as brief talk summaries of all speakers are provided. This first session explored the challenges encountered with submission of biosimilar marketing applications from the regulatory agencies’ perspectives. Expectations for a successful submission of the CMC information were described. The second session addressed high-level technical challenges and avoiding pitfalls frequently encountered during Biosimilar candidate development, including data quality expectations, the creation of the final control strategy, and strategic choices necessary for candidate selection and development. Both, regulatory perspectives and industry experience, were shared. The last session explored the use of statistical tools to provide meaningful contributions to the demonstration of analytical similarity. The presentations highlighted common issues and practical challenges that arise during the application of statistical tools.