Predicting the clinical subcutaneous absorption rate constant of monoclonal antibodies using only the primary sequence: a machine learning approach

Autor: Ronghua Bei, Justin Thomas, Shiven Kapur, Mahlet Woldeyes, Adam Rauk, Jason Robarge, Jiangyan Feng, Kaoutar Abbou Oucherif
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: mAbs, Vol 16, Iss 1 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 19420862
1942-0870
1942-0862
DOI: 10.1080/19420862.2024.2352887
Popis: ABSTRACTSubcutaneous injections are an increasingly prevalent route of administration for delivering biological therapies including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). Compared with intravenous delivery, subcutaneous injections reduce administration costs, shorten the administration time, and are strongly preferred from a patient experience point of view. An understanding of the absorption process of a mAb from the injection site to the systemic circulation is critical to the process of subcutaneous mAb formulation development. In this study, we built a model to predict the absorption rate constant (ka), which denotes how fast a mAb is absorbed from the site of administration. Once trained, our model (enabled by the XGBoost algorithm in machine learning) can predict the ka of a mAb following a subcutaneous injection using in silico molecular properties alone (generated from the primary sequence). Our model does not need clinically observed plasma concentration-time data; this is a novel capability not previously achieved in predictive pharmacokinetic models. The model also showed improved performance when benchmarked against a recently reported mechanistic model that relied on clinical data to predict subcutaneous absorption of mAbs. We further interpreted the model to understand which molecular properties affect the absorption rate and showed that our findings are consistent with previous studies evaluating subcutaneous absorption through direct experimentation. Taken altogether, this study reports the development, validation, benchmarking, and interpretation of a model that can predict the clinical ka of a mAb using its primary sequence as the only input.
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