Electrophoretic analysis of PEGylated hemoglobin-based blood substitutes

Polyethylene glycol (PEG)-conjugated hemoglobins, a novel class of blood substitutes, were investigated by a combination of native and denaturing one- and two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) coupled with the microspectrophotometric characterization of single bands and the functional analysis of electrophoretically separated fractions. For these intrinsically heterogeneous products, the molecular mass, the size distribution, and the degree of PEGylation are strictly correlated to their side effects and, therefore, are crucial pieces of information to evaluate their safety and efficacy. The PEGylation pattern was shown to strongly depend on the quaternary conformation of hemoglobin during the reaction, and the degree of conjugation was shown to correlate with the oxygen binding properties of the individual electrophoretically separated fractions. Moreover, small but not negligible fractions of underivatized tetramers, known to be responsible for serious side effects, were detected even in preparations with a high average degree of PEGylation. Overall, this approach might be exploited to characterize other products of protein PEGylation, an increasingly relevant technology for the optimization of the pharmacokinetic properties of protein-based drugs.