Purification of Recombinant Human Growth Hormone Using a Short Synthetic Peptide

SOLEDAD L. SAAVEDRA; MARIA C MARTINEZ CERON; SILVANA L. GIUDICESSI; GUILLERMINA FORNO; FERNANDO ALBERICIO; OSVALDO CASCONE; SILVIA A. CAMPERI

Simposio; 25th American Peptide Symposium; 2017

Recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) is used for the treatmentof several pathologies, most of them related to growth. Although thereare several expression systems used for its production, the milk fromtransgenic cows is one of the most interesting due to the high levels ofrhGH achieved (5 g/l). We have designed and synthesized a shortpeptide using Fmoc chemistry and studied its ability to purify rhGHfrom milk once immobilized on a Sepharose support. The adsorptionisotherm for the rhGH-peptide system showed a dissociation constantof 3.1 × 10-6 M, more moderate than those of antibodies, which are inthe order of 10-9 M. Once performed the chromatography between ourgenerated peptide-resin and spiked milk with rhGH, we analyzed withSDS-PAGE the wash and elution fractions and observed that rhGHwas purified with over 90% purity in a single step. This proves thatshort peptides are an efficient and economical tool for the purificationof therapeutic proteins from complex mixtures.