Successive remodeling of IgG glycans using a solid-phase enzymatic platform

Abstract

AbstractThe success of glycoprotein-based drugs in various disease treatments has become widespread. Frequently, therapeutic glycoproteins exhibit a heterogeneous array of glycans that are intended to mimic human glycopatterns. While immunogenic responses to biologic drugs are uncommon, enabling exquisite control of glycosylation with minimized microheterogeneity would improve their safety, efficacy and bioavailability. Therefore, close attention has been drawn to the development of glycoengineering strategies to control the glycan structures. With the accumulation of knowledge about the glycan biosynthesis enzymes, enzymatic glycan remodeling provides a potential strategy to construct highly ordered glycans with improved efficiency and biocompatibility. In this study, we quantitatively evaluate more than 30 enzymes for glycoengineering immobilized immunoglobulin G, an impactful glycoprotein class in the pharmaceutical field. We demonstrate successive glycan remodeling in a solid-phase platform, which enabled IgG glycan harmonization into a series of complex-type N-glycoforms with high yield and efficiency while retaining native IgG binding affinity.SignificanceGlycosylation plays critical functional and structural roles in protein biology. However, our understanding of how discrete glycan structures affect protein behaviors remains extremely limited due to the naturally occurring microheterogeneity. Through the use of characterized glycoengineering enzyme combination, we report a solid-phase glycan remodeling (SPGR) platform that enables efficient IgG glycan harmonization into several glycoforms of interest with high biocompatibility to the substrates. It provides an efficient strategy to screen the biological behavior of distinct glycoforms, building a fundamental understanding of glycosylation.