A variety of post-translational modifications (PTMs) can impact a biotherapeutic protein’s mass, but none are as common as glycosylation.[1] Hence, the headline for a recent article in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News,  “Post-Translational Icing on the Biologics Cake,” featuring comments from Sean McCarthy, Ph.D., Global Market Manager of Biologics at SCIEX.

About the Article: Biotherapeutic protein glycosylation plays a key role in whether or not a biologic drug can effectively treat disease, making the detection and characterization of these glycan structures an important topic for pharmaceutical developers.  Dr. McCarthy gives his take on using different liquid chromatography separation techniques together with mass spectrometry to go after low-level immunogenic glycan epitopes on biotherapeutics, which could elicit an undesirable immune response in patients. The development of  focused instrumentation and software solutions to meet the needs of biologics characterization workflows are profiled in this article, with a focus on the SCIEX TripleTOF® 6600 MS system coupled with BioPharmaView™ software. Together, the TripleTOF system and BioPharmaView software can profile intact protein glycoforms, or comprehensively identify and quantitate specific glycopeptides.Read the Article >

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About Dr. McCarthy:
Sean M. McCarthy received his degree in Chemistry from the University of Vermont in 2005, followed by his NIH postdoctoral associate within the Department of Pathology at the same institution. His work centered on environmental oxidative stress related diseases using a variety of biochemical and mass spectrometric techniques. Dr. McCarthy has worked in the mass spectrometry industry since 2008 and has held several scientific and business development positions to address pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical characterization. Dr. McCarthy is currently the Global Market Manager of Biologics at SCIEX, where his focus is on delivering targeted solutions for biopharmaceutical characterization.

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[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135964461600026X