Optimal spacer arm microenvironment for the immobilization of recombinant Protein A on heterofunctional amino-epoxy agarose supports

In this study, recombinant Staphylococcus Protein A (rSPA) was immobilized on three different amino-epoxy agaroses: traditional amino-epoxy, butanediol diglycidyl-amino and glycidyl-amino agarose (coded as AE, BDA and GA agarose, respectively), for obtaining affinity adsorbents to bind human immunoglobulin G (hIgG). The effects of the spacer arm microenvironment of the support on the rSPA immobilization were investigated. Compared with the AE agarose, the GA agarose presents ionized amino groups far from the support. Therefore, the rSPA immobilization efficiency of 92 % is slightly higher than that of 88 % on AE agarose due to the weak steric hindrance. Moreover, the BDA agarose exhibited the lowest immobilization efficiency of 58 %, attributing to the existence of hydrophobic butylidene groups on the BDA agarose. Ethanolamine was used as the blocking agent to obtain three affinity adsorbents. The hIgG-binding capacity from the human plasma was determined to be 18.7, 34.7 and 38.7 mg/mL for rSPA-BDA, rSPA-AE and rSPA-GA, respectively. Furthermore, the maximum hIgG-binding capacity was calculated by the Langmuir model of adsorption isotherm to be 25.1, 44.8 and 52.2 mg/mL for rSPA-BDA, rSPA-AE and rSPA-GA, respectively. Therefore, the GA agarose bears the optimal spacer arm microenvironment for preparing the rSPA adsorbent with high hIgG-binding capacity.