Development and qualification of a high sensitivity, high throughput Q-PCR assay for quantitation of residual host cell DNA in purification process intermediate and drug substance samples

Abstract Methods of high sensitivity, accuracy and throughput are needed for quantitation of low level residual host cell DNA in purification process intermediates and drug substances of therapeutic proteins. In this study, we designed primer/probe sets targeting repetitive Alu repeats or Alu-equivalent sequences in the human, Chinese hamster and murine genomes. When used in quantitative polymerase chain reactions (Q-PCRs), these primer/probe sets showed high species specificity and gave significantly higher sensitivity compared to those targeting the low copy number GAPDH gene. This allowed for detection of residual host cell DNA of much lower concentrations and, for some samples, eliminated the need for DNA extraction. By combining the high sensitivity Alu Q-PCR with high throughput automated DNA extraction using an automated MagMAX magnetic particle processor, we successfully developed and qualified a highly accurate, specific, sensitive and efficient method for the quantitation of residual host cell DNA in process intermediates and drug substances of multiple therapeutic proteins purified from cells of multiple species. Compared to the previous method using manual DNA extraction and primer/probe sets targeting the GAPDH gene, this new method increased our DNA extraction throughput by over sevenfold, and lowered the lower limit of quantitation by up to eightfold.