Separation of salvianic acid A from the fermentation broth of engineered Escherichia coli using macroporous resins.

Salvianic acid A (also known as danshensu) is a plant-derived polyphenolic acid, and has a variety of physiological and pharmacological activities. Our laboratory previously constructed an unprecedented artificial biosynthetic pathway in Escherichia coli and established the fermentation process to produce salvianic acid A. Here, we developed an efficient method for separating salvianic acid A from the fermentation broth of engineered Escherichia coli by macroporous resins. Among ten tested macroporous resins, the static and dynamic adsorption/desorption experiments demonstrated that X5 resin was the best to separate salvianic acid A from fermentation broth. Other parameters during static and dynamic procedures were also investigated. Under the optimum separation conditions, the average adsorption capacity of SAA were 10.66±0.54 mg/g dry resin and the desorption ratio was 85.6±4.1%. The purity and recovery yield of salvianic acid A in the final dry product were 90.2±1.5 and 81.5±2.3%, respectively. The results show that adsorption separation with macroporous resin X5 was an efficient method to prepare salvianic acid A from fermentation broth. This work will benefit the development and application of plant-derived salvianic acid A and its derivatives.

The pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of site-specific pegylated genetically modified recombinant human interleukin-11 in normal and thrombocytopenic monkeys.

In order to improve the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of recombinant human interleukin-11 mutein (mIL-11) and to reduce the frequency of administration, we examined the feasibility of chemical modification of mIL-11 by methoxy polyethylene glycol succinimidyl carbonate (mPEG-SC). PEG-mIL-11 was prepared by a pH controlled amine specific method. Bioactivity of the protein was determined in a IL-11-dependent in vitro bioassay, its pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties were investigated by using normal and thrombocytopenic monkey models. N-terminus sequencing and peptide mapping analysis revealed that Lys33 is the PEGylated position for PEG-mIL-11. Bioactivity of PEG-mIL-11 assessed by B9-11 cell proliferation assay was comparable to that of mIL-11. More than 79-fold increase in area-under-the curve (AUC) and 26-fold increase in maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) was observed in pharmacokinetic analysis. Single dose administration of the PEG-mIL-11 induced blood platelets number increase and the effect duration were comparable to that of 7 to 10 consecutive daily administration of mIL-11 to the normal and thrombocytopenic monkey models. PEG-mIL-11 is a promising therapeutic for thrombocytopenia.