Validating the positivity thresholds of drug-tolerant anti-infliximab and anti-adalimumab antibody assays

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Authors
Nice, Rachel
Chanchlani, Neil
Bewshea, Claire
Ahmad, Tariq
Goodhand, James R.
McDonald, Timothy J.
Perry, Mandy
Kennedy, Nicholas A.
Journal
Alimentary Pharmacology & Therpeutics
Type
Journal Article
Publisher
Wiley
Rights
© 2020 The Authors. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial licence, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
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Background: When used proactively, drug-tolerant anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF) antibody assays provide early opportunity to suppress immunogenicity. Aim: To validate positivity thresholds of IDKmonitor drug-tolerant anti-infliximab and -adalimumab antibody assays. Methods: We applied positivity thresholds, defined by testing sera from 498 anti-TNF naive healthy adults, from the Exeter Ten Thousand study to data from our therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) service and Personalised Anti-TNF Therapy in Crohn's disease (PANTS) cohort to explore associations with drug level and treatment outcomes. Results: The 80% one-sided lower confidence interval of the 99th centile concentration for anti-infliximab and -adalimumab antibodies were lower than the manufacturers threshold of 10 arbitrary units (AU)/mL; 9 and 6 AU/mL, respectively. Using these new thresholds in the TDM cohort, more adalimumab- than infliximab- (11.2% [814/7272] vs 3.1% [390/12 683] P < 0.0001) treated patients were reclassified as antibody-positive. Adalimumab drug concentrations in this reclassified group (median 8.1, interquartile range [IQR] 5.5-11.0 mg/L) were lower than those below the new threshold (<5AU/mL) (median 9.9, IQR 7.1-13.0 mg/L; P < 0.0001), but higher than at the manufacturer's threshold (10-29 AU/mL) (median 5.9 mg/L, IQR 3.5-8.7; P < 0.0001). No difference in infliximab drug concentration was observed using the new or manufacturer's positivity threshold (P = 0.11). In the PANTS cohort, patients with anti-adalimumab antibody concentrations at or above the new threshold were more likely to be in primary non-response (25/68 [37%] vs. 64/332 [19%], P = 0.0035), and non-remission at week 54 (51/62 [82%] vs. 168/279 [60%], P = 0.0011), than patients with anti-drug antibody concentrations in the group below the new threshold (0-5 AU/mL); this was not seen for anti-infliximab antibodies. Conclusion: Laboratories should derive antibody positivity thresholds for assays they use. For adalimumab, low-concentration anti-drug antibodies were associated with lower drug levels and treatment failure.
Citation
Nice R et al. Validating the positivity thresholds of drug-tolerant anti-infliximab and anti-adalimumab antibody assays. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2021 Jan;53(1):128-137. doi: 10.1111/apt.16135. Epub 2020 Nov 23.
Note
This article is freely available via Open Access. Click on the Publisher URL to access it via the publisher's site.