It is well established that proper N-glycosylation significantly influences the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). However, the specific immunological relevance of individual mAb-associated N-glycan structures is currently largely unknown, because of the heterogeneous N-glycan profiles of mAbs when produced in mammalian cells. Here we report on the generation of a plant-based expression platform allowing the efficient production of mAbs with a homogeneous beta1,4-galactosylated N-glycosylation structure, the major N-glycan species present on serum IgG. This was achieved by the expression of a highly active modified version of the human beta1,4-galactosyltransferase in glycoengineered plants lacking plant-specific glycosylation. Moreover, we demonstrate that two anti-human immunodeficiency virus mAbs with fully beta1,4-galactosylated N-glycans display improved virus neutralization potency when compared with other glycoforms produced in plants and Chinese hamster ovary cells. These findings indicate that mAbs containing such homogeneous N-glycan structures should display improved in vivo activities. Our system, using expression of mAbs in tobacco plants engineered for post-translational protein processing, provides a new means of overcoming the two hurdles that limit the therapeutic use of anti-human immunodeficiency virus mAbs in global health initiatives, low biological potency and high production costs.
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Strasser et al. (2009) studied this question.