Expression and purification of active recombinant human bone morphogenetic 7-2 dimer fusion protein

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) have been applied in bone regeneration therapy due to their significant osteogenic activity, however, the complicated processing and high cost in producing recombinant BMP have limited their use in the clinic. In this study, we have developed a simple method to prepare recombinant human BMP7-BMP2 fusion protein with a flexible peptide linker (rhBMP7-2). The rhBMP7-2 protein is expressed efficiently in Escherichia coli, and the denatured protein purified by anion exchange chromatography then refolded by dialysis. The yield was about 6.8 mg per gram of wet cell weight. The bioactivity of re-folded rhBMP7-2 was measured by alkaline phosphatase assay and alizarin red staining using both C2C12 and MC3T3-E1 cells, and also using the rat subcutaneous ectopic bone formation model. High level osteogenic activity was found in all the assays tested demonstrating the production of corrected folded and active rhBMP7-2 protein.