[Webinar] Characterising biotherapeutic charge variants with icIEF fractionation and LC-MS
What is really behind your charge variant peaks?
From charge variant profile to molecular identification: combining icIEF fractionation and LC-MS
A icIEF profile can tell you that a biotherapeutic contains multiple charge variants. The harder question is understanding what those variants actually are.
On 23 September, join Arnaud Delobel, our R&D and Innovation Director, and Nicki Zhang, Advanced Field Application Scientist at Bio-Techne, for a Drug Discovery News webinar exploring how icIEF fractionation combined with high-resolution mass spectrometry can help move from peak measurement to structural identification.
Drawing on real case studies, they will discuss how selected charge variants can be isolated following icIEF separation using the MauriceFlex system and further investigated using intact LC-MS and peptide mapping. They will also share where the workflow works well and where important analytical challenges remain.
23 September 2026
10:00-11:00 AM ET | 16:00-17:00 CEST
Looking beyond the charge profile
icIEF is widely used to separate and quantify charge variants in biotherapeutics. It offers excellent resolving power and has become a reference technique across development, comparability studies, release testing and stability programmes.
Yet even the most detailed charge variant profile has an important limitation. It can show where the variants are. It cannot tell you what they are.
When an acidic peak increases during stability studies or a new peak appears after a process change, important questions quickly follow:
- Which molecular modification is responsible?
- Can it be localised?
- Does it affect product quality, activity or stability?
- Can the variant observed in a routine icIEF method be confidently linked to a specific molecular species?
Why should you attend?
This session is particularly relevant if you:
- investigate charge variants in biotherapeutics,
- work on CQAs, comparability studies or biosimilar development,
- need to investigate the molecular origin of an acidic or basic peak,
- use mass spectrometry to support biopharmaceutical characterisation,
- work with complex modalities, including antibody fragments and conjugated molecules.
Register now to explore the opportunities, limitations and real-world applications of icIEF fractionation combined with LC-MS