Recent advances in (therapeutic protein) drug development

Abstract

Therapeutic protein drugs are an important class of medicines serving patients most in need of novel therapies. Recently approved recombinant protein therapeutics have been developed to treat a wide variety of clinical indications, including cancers, autoimmunity/inflammation, exposure to infectious agents, and genetic disorders. The latest advances in protein-engineering technologies have allowed drug developers and manufacturers to fine-tune and exploit desirable functional characteristics of proteins of interest while maintaining (and in some cases enhancing) product safety or efficacy or both. In this review, we highlight the emerging trends and approaches in protein drug development by using examples of therapeutic proteins approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the previous five years (2011-2016, namely January 1, 2011, through August 31, 2016).

Keywords: biosimilar; cancer therapeutics; protein therapeutics; recombinant DNA-derived therapeutic proteins; therapeutic protein drugs.

Figure 1.. Complexity of therapeutic protein drugs.

( a) Graphical representation of the complexity of the manufacture of a therapeutic protein drug compared with a small-molecule drug. The number of batch records, product quality tests, critical process steps, and process data entries associated with small-molecule drugs (black) and therapeutic protein drugs (grey) as bars . ( b) Illustration depicting the differences in size and complexity of a protein therapeutic (recombinant (r) analogue of human coagulation factor VIII (FVIII); Novoeight, Novo Nordisk; molecular weight = 166,000 Da) and a small-molecule drug (ibuprofen; molecular weight = 206 Da) by molecular model.

Figure 2.. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved therapeutic proteins (2011–2016*).

( a) Bar graph showing the number of therapeutic protein FDA approvals by year (2011–2016*). ( b) Pie chart showing the distribution of FDA-approved therapeutic proteins (2011–2016*) by drug class. ( c) (Left) Pie chart showing the distribution of FDA-approved therapeutic proteins (2011–2016*) by therapeutic area. (Right) Pie chart showing the distribution of secondary therapeutic area for oncology drugs. *January 1, 2011, through August 31, 2016.