Liquid
chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) affords
a highly promising solution for absolute quantification of biotherapeutics/targets
in tissues, which is critical for drug development. Nonetheless, accurate/robust
tissue quantification remains challenging largely owing to the lack
of optimal approaches to address the following fundamental prerequisites:
(i) efficient removal of residual blood without losing tissue-associated
biotherapeutics; (ii) an optimal method to exhaustively/quantitatively
recover target proteins from tissues; and (iii) an appropriate strategy
to prepare calibration/quality-control samples to ensure accurate
tissue analysis. Here, we devised novel analytical procedures enabling
extensive and systematic investigation of the above issues and thereby
development of optimal strategies for accurate tissue analysis. Key
discoveries include: first, using a novel procedure of sequential
administration of nonlabeled and then stable-isotope-labeled monoclonal
antibody (mAb); it was determined that perfusion with three blood
volumes of heparinized saline is optimal, achieving efficient blood
removal (95–99%) and low quantitative bias (0.5–13%);
second, a reference sample set established by mass-balanced, exhaustive
extraction, permitted accurate measurement of absolute protein recovery from tissues of dosed animals; with this method,
we found mAb biotherapeutics present in free-(49.3–75.4%) and
bound-forms (24.6–50.7%) in tissues, even without a target;
therefore, a denaturing detergent buffer is necessary for exhaustive
extraction (recovery>90%); third, overnight-incubation of calibration
samples after spiking mAb to tissue was found to improve quantitative
accuracy, especially for nondenaturing buffer extraction. These investigations
established the critical parameters and optimal protocols that can
be universally applied to achieve accurate and robust quantification
of biotherapeutics/targets in tissues. As a proof of concept, we conducted
the first-ever extensive pharmacokinetics measurement of mAb in major
tissues with a LC–MS-based method, where interesting features
of mAb tissue disposition were observed.