A novel and one-step purification of human ceruloplasmin by acharan sulfate affinity chromatography

New orphan disease therapies from the proteome of industrial plasma processing waste- a treatment for aceruloplasminemia

Plasma-derived therapeutic proteins are produced through an industrial fractionation process where proteins are purified from individual intermediates, some of which remain unused and are discarded. Relatively few plasma-derived proteins are exploited clinically, with most of available plasma being directed towards the manufacture of immunoglobulin and albumin. Although the plasma proteome provides opportunities to develop novel protein replacement therapies, particularly for rare diseases, the high cost of plasma together with small patient populations impact negatively on the development of plasma-derived orphan drugs. Enabling therapeutics development from unused plasma fractionation intermediates would therefore constitute a substantial innovation. To this objective, we characterized the proteome of unused plasma fractionation intermediates and prioritized proteins for their potential as new candidate therapies for human disease. We selected ceruloplasmin, a plasma ferroxidase, as a potential therapy for aceruloplasminemia, an adult-onset ultra-rare neurological disease caused by iron accumulation as a result of ceruloplasmin mutations. Intraperitoneally administered ceruloplasmin, purified from an unused plasma fractionation intermediate, was able to prevent neurological, hepatic and hematological phenotypes in ceruloplasmin-deficient mice. These data demonstrate the feasibility of transforming industrial waste plasma fraction into a raw material for manufacturing of new candidate proteins for replacement therapies, optimizing plasma use and reducing waste generation.

Mining Invertebrate Natural Products for Future Therapeutic Treasure

This review focuses on biologically active entities from invertebrate sources, especially snails. The reader will encounter several categories of compounds from snails including glycosaminoglycans, peptides, proteins (glycoproteins), and enzymes which possess diverse biological activities. Among glycosaminoglycans, acharan sulfate which was isolated from a giant African snail Acahtina fulica is reviewed extensively. Conotoxins which are also called conopeptides are unique peptide mixtures from marine cone snail. Conotoxins are secreted to capture its prey, and currently have the potential to be highly effective drug candidates. One of the conotoxins is now in the market as a pain killer. Proteins as well as glycoproteins in the snail are known to be involved in the host defense process from an attack of diverse pathogens. Carbohydrate-degrading enzymes characterized and purified in snails are introduced to give an insight into the applicability in glycobiology research such as synthesis and structure characterization of glycoconjugates. It seems that simple snails produce very complicated biological compounds which could be an invaluable source in future therapeutics as well as research areas in natural medicine.

Mass spectrometry of peptides and proteins from human blood

It is difficult to convey the accelerating rate and growing importance of mass spectrometry applications to human blood proteins and peptides. Mass spectrometry can rapidly detect and identify the ionizable peptides from the proteins in a simple mixture and reveal many of their post-translational modifications. However, blood is a complex mixture that may contain many proteins first expressed in cells and tissues. The complete analysis of blood proteins is a daunting task that will rely on a wide range of disciplines from physics, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, electromagnetic instrumentation, mathematics and computation. Therefore the comprehensive discovery and analysis of blood proteins will rank among the great technical challenges and require the cumulative sum of many of mankind's scientific achievements together. A variety of methods have been used to fractionate, analyze and identify proteins from blood, each yielding a small piece of the whole and throwing the great size of the task into sharp relief. The approaches attempted to date clearly indicate that enumerating the proteins and peptides of blood can be accomplished. There is no doubt that the mass spectrometry of blood will be crucial to the discovery and analysis of proteins, enzyme activities, and post-translational processes that underlay the mechanisms of disease. At present both discovery and quantification of proteins from blood are commonly reaching sensitivities of ∼1 ng/mL.