Purification of Recombinant Human Growth Hormone Using a Short Synthetic Peptide

ALBERICIO, F.; MARTÍNEZ-CERON, M. C.; CAMPERI, S. A.; FORNO, G.; SAAVEDRA, S. L.; CASCONE, O.; GIUDICESSI, S. L.

Whistler

Simposio; 25th American Peptide Symposium; 2017

Recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) is used for the treatment ofseveral pathologies, most of them related to growth. Although there are severalexpression systems used for its production, the milk from transgenic cows isone of the most interesting due to the high levels of rhGH achieved (5 g/l). Wehave designed and synthesized a short peptide using Fmoc chemistry and studiedits ability to purify rhGH from milk once immobilized on a Sepharose support.The adsorption isotherm for the rhGH-peptide system showed a dissociationconstant of 3.1 × 10-6 M, more moderate than those of antibodies,which are in the order of 10-9 M. Once performed the chromatographybetween our generated peptide-resin and spiked milk with rhGH, we analyzed withSDS-PAGE the wash and elution fractions and observed that rhGH was purifiedwith over 90% purity in a single step. This proves that short peptides are anefficient and economical tool for the purification of therapeutic proteins fromcomplex mixtures.