The combined removal of albumin and immunoglobulins from human serum

摘要

The high abundance of albumin and immunoglobulin, which comprise about 80% of total serum protein, is a major problem in proteome studies which use serum, plasma, cerebrospinal fluid or synovial fluid samples. The depletion of these proteins is therefore one of the main prerequisites for success in such studies. Years ago the depletion of human serum albumin (HSA) involved initial prefractionation via HPLC and Cibacron Blue columns, a method that lacked specificity and reproducibility [2]. This problem has been overcome by modern anti-HSA antibody based disposable columns for the specific and quantitative depletion of albumin [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. The next challenge in serum protein analysis is the depletion of the high concentration of IgGs, which are otherwise seen as broad smears in two dimensional electrophoresis gels, mainly in the neutral to basic pH region in the 50 kDa area (heavy chains) and 25 kDa area (light chains).