During the past decade, mass spectrometry, notably LC/MS, has become a major approach to identify and quantify proteins in patient samples. It includes analysis before treatments to find the proper biomarkers for cancers diagnostics, and monitoring of the arising of the anti-drug antibodies in human plasma after therapies. Despite the fact that MS has pretty high sensitivity and specificity, research in biotherapeutics requires even more. Immunocapture, and so specific protein enrichment, offer an interesting immunoassay solution. Here, we present simple to use and efficient reagents to improve the immunocapture and thus the output of the MS technology.

Challenges and limitations of ADC development

One of the major challenges of modern medicine is to find a safe cancer therapy. The Food and Drug Administration has approved Adcetris® (brentuximab vedotin) and Kadcyla® (ado-trastuzumab emtansine) that are considered as powerful treatments against cancer. They are good examples of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). The principle is to link a drug, that can be cytotoxic, to an antibody able to target cancer cells. Unfortunately, the development of ADCs faces some difficulties. Indeed, depending on the method for the conjugation, the ADC can be highly heterogenous.

Biomolecule conjugation is critical to many applications such as bead-based assays, ELISA and chromatography by affinity. Unfortunately the classical methods are known to be tedious and with low efficiency. Trilink Biotechnologies has come this year with the solution, an innovative chromophore-linker-based conjugation chemistry called ChromaLink.

Capping is a required protection in 5′ of the mRNA that is necessary for biological activity and stability into the cells. There are already several methods of capping using mCap, ARCA or enzymatic methods. Unfortunately, they are limited in efficiency (such as mCap and ARCA), and can be costly (such as the enzymatic methods). Trilink Biotechnologies, the modified nucleic acid experts, have developped a new, far more efficient technology called CleanCap available in Europe via tebu-bio.