Free sulfhydryl measurement as an indicator of antibody stability

Anal Biochem. 2008 Nov 1;382(1):66-8. doi: 10.1016/j.ab.2008.07.016. Epub 2008 Jul 26.

Abstract

Monoclonal antibodies are a major subclass of biopharmaceuticals. They are structurally different from other biopharmaceuticals in size and quaternary structure. Here we demonstrate a correlation between chemical stability of antibodies and thermal stability. We show that overall thermal protein stability can be predicted based on the measurement of free sulfhydryl (-SH) content on applying mildly denaturing conditions. We propose that this method can be adapted to a high-throughput screening format and used either as an absolute measure of thermal stability or for ranking a panel of possible variants.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Antibodies, Monoclonal / chemistry*
  • Antibodies, Monoclonal / metabolism
  • Calibration
  • Cattle
  • Fluorescence
  • Humans
  • Protein Denaturation
  • Sulfhydryl Compounds / analysis*
  • Sulfhydryl Compounds / chemistry*
  • Transition Temperature

Substances

  • Antibodies, Monoclonal
  • Sulfhydryl Compounds