Avoiding Polysorbate Pitfalls: A Novel Method to Characterize Polysorbate Degradation

Polysorbates and other surfactants are critical components of biopharmaceutical formulations as they prevent aggregation and the formation of proteinaceous particles, as well as to prevent surface interactions, which may cause protein degradation.  However, polysorbates are prone to degradation through hydrolysis or oxidation and there is an increasing awareness and amount of research on this issue.  

Current methods to characterize surfactant degradation tend to be long, over 40 minutes, and have limited resolution, particularly the resolution between the free fatty acid and the polysorbate monoester.  Here, we present a novel method and column designed for higher resolution and higher throughput analyses for polysorbate degradation.

Presenter: Wendi Hale, PhD (Global Product Manager, Agilent Technologies, Inc.)

Wendi is a global product manager for Agilent bio LC columns. She joined Agilent in 2017 as an LC/MS applications scientist, focused on biopharma applications. Her interest in biopharma applications started during her PhD at the University of Michigan under Prof. Kicki Håkansson, studying top-down and bottom-up protein analysis with FT-ICR mass spectrometry. She also studied phosphoproteomics during her post-doc at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.