Discovery and investigation of the truncation of the (GGGGS)n linker and its effect on the productivity of bispecific antibodies expressed in mammalian cells.

Abstract

Protein engineering is a powerful tool for designing or modifying therapeutic proteins for enhanced efficacy, increased safety, reduced immunogenicity, and improved delivery. Fusion proteins are an important group of therapeutic compounds that often require an ideal linker to combine diverse domains to fulfill the desired function. GGGGS [(G4S)n] linkers are commonly used during the engineering of proteins because of their flexibility and resistance to proteases. However, unexpected truncation was observed in the linker of a bispecific antibody, which presented challenges in terms of production and quality. In this work, a bispecific antibody containing 5*G4S was investigated, and the truncation position of the linkers was confirmed. Our investigation revealed that codon optimization, which can overcome the negative influence of a high repetition rate and high GC content in the (G4S)n linker, may reduce the truncation rate from 5-10% to 1-5%. Moreover, the probability of truncation when a shortened 3* or 4*G4S linker was used was much lower than that when a 5*G4S linker was used in mammalian cells. In the case of expressing a bispecific antibody, the bioactivity and purity of the product containing a shorter G4S linker were further investigated and are discussed.