AI & Antibodies mini-series | Reducing antibody viscosity to improve subcutaneous delivery
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What is the overall focus of this episode on antibody viscosity and subcutaneous delivery?
Today we're talking about antibody viscosity and the improvement of subcutaneous delivery for antibody therapeutics. This is the Talking Techniques Podcast and you are listening to our mini series documenting key papers and findings from the ongoing article collection in the journal MAPS on artificial intelligence and machine learning in antibody development. I'm your host, Bartonique Senior Editor Tristan Free, and I'm joined by Peter Tessier, the Albert M. Mattox Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan, whose paper, Production of Monoclonal Antibody Viscosity Using Interpretable Machine Learning, opened the article collection, and he's just released another paper in the collection that also deals with the topic of viscosity.
Delving further into the antibody and formulation properties responsible for this undesirable characteristic. Peter, it's great to have you on the podcast.
Thanks, yeah, really a joy to be here.
Um so I suppose we should start with um subcutaneous delivery of antibody therapeutics. Um what are the challenges associated with this delivery method?
Sure, yeah. You know, it's it's a it's a compelling delivery method. Um Because um it's something that is very attractive for the patient, but it does come with some challenges. And you know, the challenges are that typically we can deliver We're limited by the volume that we can deliver. And that's really the key problem. So typically we can only deliver about a a milliliter or two milliliters of solution. And so everything has to fit inside that's that volume. And and there is really the challenge that um we'd like to include a lot of the drug, in this case the antibody. But um we have a lot of challenges when we try to pack more and more drug into that uh small volume.
Okay, fantastic. And and so you mentioned that um so obviously it has these challenges, but uh you mentioned it was beneficial for the patients. Um could you take us through like why it's it is one of the most common delivery methods for antibody therapeutics and what what its benefits are?
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I think um as a patient, what you would like is t um The most convenient and simple administration procedure possible. Now, because um an antibody is a protein, we we basically can't take it as a pill because our gut is a protein degradation machine. And so therefore that doesn't work. So we have to somehow administer it um you know more directly um so it can access the bloodstream. And so subcutaneous delivery. Is a lot more desirable than the alternative, which is basically an infusion. Um, so an infusion, we have to go into a clinic, we have to be monitored, it takes, you know, takes a whole day of our life in some cases. Um, where subcutaneous administration is something we can do at home.
It's something we can do, you know, um much, much more simply. And
What are the main pros and cons of sub‑cutaneous delivery for antibody therapeutics?
And subcutaneous administration has become, you know, widely used today. And so just from a patient perspective, it's just um much more desirable because it can be done at home, it can be done self administration, and it just it increases your quality of life dramatically when that's um sort of the route that you can administer this drug.
Fantastic. And and so what is it that makes uh an antibody that you're gonna use as a therapeutic well suited to subcutane subcutaneous delivery?
Good question. Um, you know, what we would like for sort of an ideal antibody that would be used for subcutaneous delivery is we'd like uh an antibody that we could say behaves well when it's in highly crowded environments. Because ultimately we're packing a lot of drug, a lot of antibody in a small volume. That just means we have very high concentration. Think of the antibody molecules are in, they're being forced to be in tighter separation distances than their own size. So just think of a room of crowded people. And the idea is essentially we want, even at those very high densities, we want the antibody to be. um sort of not not interacting with its neighbors.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the overall focus of this episode on antibody viscosity and subcutaneous delivery?
0:06–3:06
2
What are the main pros and cons of sub‑cutaneous delivery for antibody therapeutics?
3:06–7:18
3
Which antibody characteristics make a molecule well‑suited for sub‑cutaneous injection?
7:18–10:24
4
How does the machine‑learning model predict high‑concentration antibody viscosity?
10:24–13:33
5
What does self‑association mean for antibodies and how is it measured?
13:33–17:00
6
How were the viscosity‑prediction models built and what key features drive their performance?
17:00–20:10
7
What practical formulation strategies can developers use to reduce viscosity and self‑association?
20:10–24:48
8
What final advice and future wishes does the guest share for improving sub‑cutaneous antibody delivery?
24:48–27:59
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Talking Techniques
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