Computational Characterization of Afucosylation-Based IgG1 Heterogeneity

IgG1s produced by cell culture are heterogeneous with respect to their afucosylated Fc glycan content.  Since afucosylation content dramatically changes the nature of IgG1s, there exists a need for methods capable to dissecting the contributions of the different afucosylated IgG1 forms to biological activity.  Recently, Zhan and Chung applied classical ligand-receptor mathematical analysis to receptor binding data obtained from heterogeneous mixtures of afucosylated IgG1s in order to develop methods capable of performing such operations [1] . By explaining important experimental observations and extracting valuable biochemical property information embedded in the data, their model provides a convincing demonstration of the role that mechanistic mathematical modeling can play in characterizing heterogeneous mixtures of complex molecules.  This review highlights important features of their mathematical analysis from a drug development perspective.