Quantification of PEGylated proteases with varying degree of conjugation in mixtures: An analytical protocol combining protein precipitation and capillary gel electrophoresis

摘要

PEGylation, i.e. the covalent attachment of chemically activated polyethylene glycol (PEG) to proteins, is a technique commonly used in biopharmaceutical industry to improve protein stability, pharmacokinetics and resistance to proteolytic degradation. Therefore, PEGylation represents a valuable strategy to reduce autocatalysis of biopharmaceutical relevant proteases during production, purification and storage. In case of non-specific random conjugation the existence of more than one accessible binding site results in conjugates which vary in position and number of attached PEG molecules. These conjugates may differ considerably in their physicochemical properties. Optimizing the reaction conditions with respect to the degree of PEGylation (number of linked PEG molecules) using high-throughput screening (HTS) technologies requires a fast and reliable analytical method which allows stopping the reaction at defined times.