June 14, 2007, Santa Barbara, CA--Wyatt Technology instruments have been chosen by the Ridgefield Research and Development Division of Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceutical (Ingelheim, Germany) to monitor protein aggregation states in different buffers. Wyatt's innovative Multi-Angle Light Scattering (MALS) instruments were able to track changes in the proteins as the salt concentrations and buffer solutions were modified, thus giving greater insight into the behavior and predictability of the proteins.
Protein aggregation, even under conditions favoring the native state, is a ubiquitous problem in biotechnology and biomedical engineering since it eliminates or reduces the proteins' biological function.
Diseases where protein aggregation is causal or an associated symptom include Down's syndrome, Alzheimer's and prion diseases such as BSE and CJD. Protein aggregation is encountered routinely during purification, refolding, sterilization, shipping and storage processes because of the presence of chemical, physical and thermal stresses. Providing a mechanistic basis for the pathways that lead to aggregation should allow development of rational approaches for its prevention.
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