Qi-Lei Zhang

Characterization of novel lactoferrin loaded capsules prepared with polyelectrolyte complexes.

Novel capsules loaded with lactoferrin (LF) were prepared using polyelectrolyte complexes that were formed by water soluble chitosan (WSC), sodium cellulose sulfate (NaCS) and sodium polyphosphate (PPS). Normal chitosan (soluble in acidic conditions) was chosen as a control to prepare similar capsules with NaCS and PPS. (1)H NMR and FTIR spectra analysis showed that WSC was in a form of chitosan hydrochloride which can be directly dissolved and protonated in acid-free water. SEM results showed that the capsules had a typical wall-capsule structure with a regular spherical shape and an average diameter of 1.97 mm. TGA studies revealed that the thermal stability of the capsules were enhanced and the moisture content of the drug-free/loaded capsules were 6.3% and 3.2%. SDS-PAGE results showed that the primary structures of the processed LF in the capsules were unchanged. Drug loading (LE%) and encapsulation efficiency (EE%) analysis showed that the capsules had a higher LE% (45.6%) and EE% (70.7%) than that of the control. In vitro release studies showed that the capsules had a regular and sustainable release profiles in simulated colonic fluid. All of these results indicated that the capsules prepared could be used as a candidate protein drug carrier for colon.

Review on biomedical and bioengineering applications of cellulose sulfate.

Polysaccharide sulfates are naturally existing chemicals that show important biological activities in living organisms. Cellulose sulfate is a semi-synthesized polysaccharide sulfate with a relatively simple chain structure and unique biological properties and its biological applications have been explored in research and clinical trials. With the advance of cellulose derivatization and characterization, cellulose sulfate molecules with tailored structures have been developed to fulfill individual requirements. This review aims to provide a summary of recent development of cellulose sulfate in biomedical applications. Its synthesis pathways were discussed with structure-property relationship elucidated. The application of cellulose sulfate in drug delivery and microbe/cell immobilization were summarized with emphasis given on its polyelectrolyte complex formation processes.

Hydrophobic charge‐induction resin with 5‐aminobenzimidazol as the functional ligand: preparation, protein adsorption and immunoglobulin G purification

A new hydrophobic charge-induction chromatography resin was prepared with 5-aminobenzimidazol as functional ligand and polyacrylic ester beads as matrix. Adsorption isotherms and adsorption in columns were investigated using human immunoglobulin G and bovine serum albumin as model proteins, and the influence of pH and NaCl concentration was discussed. Results showed that the ligand density was 195 μmol/mL gel, and protein selectivity can be improved by controlling pH and salt addition. An optimized purification process (sample loading at pH 8.0 with 0.2 M NaCl and elution at pH 5.0) was performed to purify human immunoglobulin G from bovine serum albumin containing feedstock, which resulted in human immunoglobulin G purity of 99.7% and recovery of 94.6%. A similar process was applied for the purification of monoclonal antibody from cell culture supernatant, which showed antibody purity of 94.9% and recovery of 92.5%. The results indicated that the new resin developed had comparable performance as Protein A chromatography and would be suitable for antibody purification from complex feedstock.

Effect and mechanism of sodium chloride on the formation of chitosan–cellulose sulfate–tripolyphosphate crosslinked beads

Chitosan obtained by deacetylation of chitin is the only pseudo-natural cationic polymer and has been widely used for a variety of applications. It can crosslink with small molecules or form polyelectrolyte complexes with polyanions, and these reactions are usually carried out in aqueous solutions under mild conditions without toxic additives or organic solvents, which is beneficial for its application in medical and pharmaceutical industries. However, these reaction processes can be affected by several factors such as charge density, ionic strength and pH. This study investigated the effect of sodium chloride (NaCl) on the formation of chitosan beads composed of chitosan, sodium cellulose sulfate (NaCS) and sodium tripolyphosphate (TPP). The results revealed that the bead size was influenced by NaCl and TPP which was mainly due to the osmotic pressure and “salting out” effects. The addition of NaCl in the three-component system led to the formation of chitosan beads without NaCS linked on the surface, which is probably because of the screening effect of NaCl in the solution. Detailed mechanisms were discussed and a model mechanism was proposed.

Characterization of immunoglobulin adsorption on dextran-grafted hydrophobic charge-induction resins: Cross-effects of ligand density and pH/salt concentration

Hydrophobic charge-induction chromatography (HCIC) is a promising technology for antibody purification. New HCIC resins MMI-B-XL with dextran-grafted agarose gel as the matrix and 2-mercapto-1-methyl-imidazole (MMI) as the functional ligand were prepared with different ligand densities. The adsorption behaviors (static adsorption equilibrium and adsorption kinetics) of human immunoglobulin G (hIgG) on series of MMI-B-XL resins at varying pHs and salt concentrations were investigated. The cross-effects of solid phase property (ligand density) and liquid phase conditions (pH and salt concentration) were focused. The results showed that the new resins had typical pH-dependent and salt-tolerant characteristics for hIgG adsorption, but differences were found for the resins with different ligand densities. For MMI-B-XL resins with higher ligand density, an obvious higher saturated adsorption capacity (Qm) and effective pore diffusivity (De) could be obtained, which were less affected at pH 7.0∼8.9 but dropped drastically at pH 5.0. Salt addition had less influence on protein adsorption onto MMI-B-XL with higher ligand density. Qm and De both reached minimum values at 0.2mol/L NaCl for all MMI-B-XL resins tested. The results of dynamic binding in the column demonstrated that MMI-B-XL with higher ligand density had better performance for hIgG adsorption, especially under high linear velocities. The mechanism of the cross-effects of ligand density and pH/salt concentration on IgG adsorption was discussed, which provides new insights into protein adsorption and mass transport for dextran-grafted HCIC resins.

Protein adsorption behavior and immunoglobulin separation with a mixed-mode resin based on p-aminohippuric acid.

p-Aminohippuric acid is a newly developed ligand for mixed-mode chromatography with a commercial resin name of Nuvia cPrime. In this study, bovine immunoglobulin G and bovine serum albumin were used as two model proteins, and the adsorption isotherms with Nuvia cPrime were investigated under different pH and salt concentrations. The results showed that pH had a strong but different influence on the adsorption of these two proteins. The adsorption capacity for bovine immunoglobulin G and BSA was 170.4 and 28.1 mg/g at pH 6.0, respectively. Different salts also showed varying effects on the protein adsorption. Moreover, the adsorption and elution behaviors of the two proteins in a column were determined under varying pH and salt concentrations. An optimized process showed that feedstock loaded under pH 6.0 with 0.8 M (NH4)2SO4 and eluted under pH 8.0 with 1.0 M NaCl could effectively purify bovine immunoglobulin G from feedstock containing BSA. The purity of bovine immunoglobulin G could reach 99.8% and the recovery was 92.7%. The results demonstrated that the control of pH and salt addition during the loading and elution processes were two key factors in improving separation efficiency with Nuvia cPrime resin.

A microcalorimetric study of molecular interactions between immunoglobulin G and hydrophobic charge-induction ligand.

Hydrophobic charge-induction chromatography (HCIC) with 4-mercaptoethyl-pyridine (MEP) as the ligand is a novel technology for antibody purification. In this study, isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) was used to evaluate the molecular interactions between MEP ligand and immunoglobulin G (IgG). Three types of IgG molecules including human IgG (hIgG), bovine IgG (bIgG) and a monoclonal antibody (mAb) were investigated with human serum albumins (HSA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) as the comparison. The thermodynamic parameters obtained from ITC were compared with the adsorption data. The results indicated that MEP binding to protein at neutral pH was entropy driven and induced by multimodal molecular interactions that was dominated by hydrophobic forces. The interactions between MEP and IgGs were stronger than that of albumins, which resulted in high binding affinity of IgGs. Moreover, the effects of pH and salt addition on MEP-hIgG binding were studied. The change of enthalpy increased obviously with the decrease of pH, which revealed that the electrostatic forces dominated the MEP-hIgG interactions at acidic condition and caused typical charge-induced elution of HCIC. Salt addition influenced both hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions. With the increase of salt concentration, the hydrophobic interactions decreased first and then increased, while the electrostatic interactions showed the opposite trend. This resulted in trade-off between the multimodal interactions, which caused the salt-tolerant property of MEP resin. In general, ITC studies revealed the molecular mechanism of three critical characteristics of HCIC, multimodal interactions, pH-dependent and salt-tolerant properties.

Multimodal charge-induction chromatography for antibody purification.

Hydrophobic charge-induction chromatography (HCIC) has advantages of high capacity, salt-tolerance and convenient pH-controlled elution. However, the binding specificity might be improved with multimodal molecular interactions. New ligand W-ABI that combining tryptophan and 5-amino-benzimidazole was designed with the concept of mutimodal charge-induction chromatography (MCIC). The indole and benzimidazole groups of the ligand could provide orientated mutimodal binding to target IgG under neutral pH, while the imidazole groups could induce the electrostatic repulsion forces for efficient elution under acidic pH. W-ABI ligand was coupled successfully onto agarose gel, and IgG adsorption behaviors were investigated. High affinity to IgG was found with the saturated adsorption capacity of 70.4 mg/ml at pH 7, and the flow rate of mobile phase showed little impact on the dynamic binding capacity. In addition, efficient elution could be achieved at mild acidic pH with high recovery. Two separation cases (IgG separation from albumin containing feedstock and monoclonal antibody purification from cell culture supernatant) were verified with high purity and recovery. In general, MCIC with the specially-designed ligand is an expanding of HCIC with improved adsorption selectivity, which would be a potential alternative to Protein A-based capture for the cost-effective purification of antibodies.

Evaluation of a PEG/hydroxypropyl starch aqueous two‐phase system for the separation of monoclonal antibodies from cell culture supernatant

In this study, an aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) with PEG and hydroxypropyl starch (HPS) was used to separate monoclonal antibody (mAb) from Chinese hamster ovary cell culture supernatant. The phase diagram of the PEG/HPS ATPS was determined, and the effects of NaCl addition were investigated. The results showed that NaCl addition could lead to a shift of the binodal curve and that phase separation would occur at higher PEG and HPS concentrations. The effects of NaCl addition, pH, and the load of cell supernatant on the partitioning of mAb in a PEG/HPS ATPS were investigated. It was found that with 6% cell supernatant and 15% NaCl addition at pH 6.0, the yield of mAb in the upper phase was 96.7% with a purity of 96.0%. The back-extraction of mAb with a PEG/phosphate ATPS were also studied, and the results showed that after the two-step extraction with ATPSs the purity of mAb could reach 97.6 ± 0.5% with a yield of 86.8 ± 1.0%, which was comparable to the purification with Protein A chromatography. These results indicate that the two-step extraction with PEG/HPS and PEG/phosphate ATPSs might be a promising alternative for the separation of mAb from cell culture supernatant.

Molecular recognition of Fc-specific ligands binding onto the consensus binding site of IgG: insights from molecular simulation

Immunoglobulin G (IgG) plays an important role in clinical diagnosis and therapeutics. Meanwhile, the consensus binding site (CBS) on the Fc domain of IgG is responsible for ligand recognition, especially for Fc‐specific ligands. In this study, molecular simulation methods were used to investigate molecular interactions between the CBS of the Fc domain and seven natural Fc‐specific ligands. The analysis on the binding energy of the Fc–ligand complex indicated that hydrophobic interactions provide the main driving force for the Fc–ligand binding processes. The hot spots on the ligands and Fc were identified with the computational alanine scanning approach. It was found that the residues of tryptophan and tyrosine on the ligands have significant contributions for the Fc–ligand binding, while Met252, Ile253, Asn434, His435, and Tyr436 are the key residues of Fc. Moreover, two binding modes based on tryptophan or tyrosine were summarized and constructed according to the pairwise interaction analysis. Guidelines for the rational design of CBS‐specific ligands with high affinity and specificity were proposed. Copyright