Biopharmaceutical Trends in Half-Life Extension Technologies

Half-life extension is one of the key challenges faced by most of the biopharmaceutical drugs. Most of these drugs are unstable and susceptible to immune response and is eliminated from the body within short span of time. Upon repeated dosing, these drugs loses their efficacy by the humoral immune response. Although major biologics like monoclonal antibodies (MAb) have a better half-life extension in nature, the other classes of biologics like antibody fragments, hormones, enzymes, blood proteins and other therapeutic proteins have a lesser half-life and hence require half-life extension technologies. Traditional technologies like PEGylation, glycosylation and encapsulation are losing its sheen because of its high immunogenicity, accumulation of the polymeric residues in kidney, liver and brain and interference with efficacy etc. Emerging technologies like recombinant fusion of albumin variants, glycan modification, chaperons and non-conjugative technologies like defucosylation are gaining importance because of their bio-compatible polymers that are highly stable, non-immunogenic and have lesser side effects. Despite these technologies are available in the market, biopharmaceutical companies are still looking for novel alternatives which are specific and in line with their biological pipelines and could provide better pharmacokinetic results. Key advantages and industry trends of different novel half-life extension has been reviewed and discussed in this article. Author: Karthick Kumar K.R.