A New Alternative Tool to Analyse Glycosylation in Monoclonal Antibodies Based on Drop-Coating Deposition Raman imaging: A Proof of Concept

Glycosylation is considered a critical quality attribute of therapeutic proteins as it affects their stability, bioactivity, and safety. Hence, the development of analytical methods able to characterize the composition and structure of glycoproteins is crucial. Existing methods are time consuming, expensive, and require significant sample preparation, which can alter the robustness of the analyses. In this context, we developed a fast, direct, and simple drop-coating deposition Raman imaging (DCDR) method combined with multivariate curve resolution alternating least square (MCR-ALS) to analyze glycosylation in monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). A database of hyperspectral Raman imaging data of glycoproteins was built, and the glycoproteins were characterized by LC-FLR-MS as a reference method to determine the composition in glycans and monosaccharides. The DCDR method was used and allowed the separation of excipient and protein by forming a “coffee ring”. MCR-ALS analysis was performed to visualize the distribution of the compounds in the drop and to extract the pure spectral components. Further, the strategy of SVD-truncation was used to select the number of components to resolve by MCR-ALS. Raman spectra were processed by support vector regression (SVR). SVR models showed good predictive performance in terms of RMSECV, R²_CV.