Kinetic Analysis of Peptide Aggregation
Background
Peptide-based pharmaceutical technology requires the delivery of therapeutic oligopeptides as designed in a stable form for effective application. Downstream from therapeutic peptide isolation or synthesis, peptides are often subjected to HPLC purification, synthetic modification, and preparatory treatments for long-term storage. Spoilage in the form of aggregation, degradation or oxidation can occur during any of these processes. Using ARGEN, a user can correlate spoilage modes to changes in molecular weight. These correlations are generated continuously and concurrently with up to 15 other samples to rapidly survey a process for conditions leading to optimal product quality. In this study, ARGEN is used to analyze spoilage which caused increases in molecular weight due to aggregation or association. Specifically, this application note discusses measures of stability, Time to Dimer (TD), and Time to Tetramer (TT), and it is important to note that stable peptide products have very long TD and TT values.