Improving mass accuracy of high performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry of intact antibodies

The glycosylation profile of intact antibody due to the galactose and fucose heterogeneity in the N-linked sugars was determined with instrument resolution of 5000 and 10,000. After deconvolution of electrospray ionization mass spectra to complete convergence, several extra peaks appeared in addition to the peaks observed in the original mass spectra. The artificial peaks were avoided if deconvolution was stopped after a smaller number of iterations. A standard antibody was used as an external calibrant to minimize mass measurement errors during long-period experiments. Precision of four consecutive LC/MS measurements of the same antibody was 10 ppm (+/-1.5 Da). By using this approach, the masses of 11 intact antibodies were measured. All antibodies containing N-terminal glutamines had a negative mass shift due to the formation of pyroglutamate (-17 Da). Although the pyroglutamate variant of intact antibody was not resolved from the unmodified variant, this modification led to a mass shift proportional to the percentage of N-terminal pyroglutamate. By accurately measuring the mass shift we were able to quantify the abundance of pyroglutamic acid on intact antibodies. Mass accuracy in measuring different antibodies was below 30 ppm (+/-4 Da). The accurate mass measurement can be an effective tool for monitoring chemical degradations in therapeutic antibodies.