Stabilization of urinary erythropoietin

Erythropoietin: physico- and biochemical analysis

A hormone, erythropoietin, mainly produced in adult kidneys and fetal livers, acts on bone marrow erythroid progenitor cells to regulate the production of erythrocyte in mammals. As a result, the oxygen carrying capacity of blood increases and the increased oxygen supply raises the cardiac function and physiological working capacity. Erythropoietin is possibly misused by athletes in sports for the purpose of improving performance. Presently there is no discernible and specific method to identify erythropoietin administration for doping control. To address this practical problem, this paper presents a summary of the applications of analytical biotechnology, especially the structural characterization of erythropoietin.

Production of monoclonal antibodies against human erythropoietin and their use in the purification of human urinary erythropoietin

Several murine monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) specific for human erythropoietin (HuEpo) were produced by hybridomas obtained from the fusion of murine myeloma cells, P3X63-Ag.8-653, with the splenocytes of mice immunized with recombinant human Epo (rHuEpo). Based on epitope analysis by a competitive binding assay, these MAbs could be classified into at least three groups: (1) 1E10, (2) 1H7, (3) 2D6, 3D6 and 3D8. In a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), using these MAbs as the solid-phase antibodies, MAb-bound HuEpo was detected with rabbit anti-HuEpo sera. Some combinations of two different classes of MAbs, such as 1H7 and 3D8, were found to capture much more HuEpo than each MAb used individually. Urinary HuEpo (U-HuEpo) was highly purified from the urine of patients with severe aplastic anemia with about 50% final recovery using an immunoaffinity column on which a mixture of 1H7 and 3D8 was immobilized. The purified U-HuEpo had a specific activity of 77,340 U/mg in a radioimmunoassay (RIA) and of 76,673 U/mg using an in vivo bioassay.

CM Affi-Gel Blue chromatography of human urine: a simple one-step procedure for obtaining erythropoietin suitable for in vitro erythropoietic progenitor assays

A method for both concentrating and purifying human urinary erythropoietin (Ep) using CM Affi-Gel Blue is described. We have found that up to 40 litres of urine can be processed on a 1 litre gel bed of this material. This gives a 25-50-fold purification of Ep with an apparent Ep recovery in excess of 100%. The high recovery of Ep is probably due, in part, to the removal of inhibitors present in the initial urine. By selecting urine that contains high levels of Ep (greater than 0.5 units/ml), it is possible with this method routinely to obtain preparations with specific activities of 100-300 units of Ep per mg protein. Such preparations are noninhibitory when assayed in either short-term suspension cultures or in longer-term methylcellulose cultures at concentrations up to 5-10 units/ml. Similar tests with these same bioassay systems have shown that other non-Ep stimulating factors (i.e. erythroblast enhancing factor (EEF), granulocyte/macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and burst promoting activity (BPA) ) are also not present at detectable levels. In this study we also show that the loss of biological activity which often occurs when partially purified Ep preparations are stored in solution is markedly reduced in the presence of either 1% bovine serum albumin or 0.1% sodium dodecyl sulphate.

Response of uraemic bone marrow cells to erythropoietin in vitro

In vitro culture technique of bone marrow cells has been applied to study the cause of anemia in uraemic patients on maintenance haemodialysis. Incorporation of 59Fe into haem in bone marrow cells of the patients in the presence of erythropoietin, as well as the inhibitory effect of their plasma on the response of normal bone marrow cells to erythropoietin, was examined. Increase in haem synthesis rate by erythropoietin in the bone marrow cells of uraemic patients (n 14; 7.9 +/- 1.4) wasnot significantly different from that in normal bone marrow cells (n 9; 5.9 +/- 1.4,p greater than 0.05), thus indicating the presence of erythroid precursor cells with normal responsiveness to erythropoetin in uraemic patients. All the plasma from uraemic patients inhibited, in dose-dependent way, the response of normal bone marrow cells to erythropoietin. Levels of erythropoietin in the plasma samples of uraemic patients were much lower than those of the patients with iron deficiency anaemia with comparable Hb concentrations. On the basis of these results, the humoral inhibitory factor appears to play a significant role in the pathogenesis of renal anaemia, in addition to the low level of circulating erythropoietin.