Immunopurification Reagents and Their Application in Biologics and Biomarker Quantitation Using LC-MS/MS in Drug Discovery.

The LC-MS/MS technology is one of the most utilized bio-analytical tools owing to its advantage of selectivity, sensitivity and multitasking. The advent of novel biological therapies and increasing demand for protein biomarker identification and quantitation have put the LC-MS/MS technology at the forefront. The questions which are been posed to the LC-MS/MS scientist are complex. The complexity of the question increases further with the matrices in which these questions need to be answered. To bring down the complexity of the analysis, LC-MS/MS technology is utilizing the immunopurification (IP) technique as the new sample preparation technique. The IP reagents are the most common reagents which are used to decrease the matrices' complexity and allow the LC-MS/MS system to reach greater sensitivity. The utilization of these reagents is increasing every day, but the proper utilization of these reagents is still unknown to the common analyst in drug discovery. The present review throws light on the utilization aspect of these reagents, as we have classified these reagents on basis of their utilization, which will allow the readers to gain an understanding of these reagents. This review will also talk about the merits and the demerits of each approach and the current understanding of utilizing these reagents.