High level expression and purification of recombinant human serum albumin in Pichia pastoris

Human serum albumin (HSA) has been extensively used in a series of clinical care settings for nearly seven decades. However, the broad application of this protein is seriously limited by its short supply. In this work, the codon sequence of HSA was cloned under the control of the alcohol oxidase 1 promoter (AOX1) and expressed as a secretory protein in Pichia pastoris. A recombinant strain displaying the highest HSA yield was selected by screening for resistance to the highest concentration of antibiotic G418. After optimizing the induction conditions and additional supplements, the highest yield of HSA reached 1.6 g/L in a shake flask. Performing high density fermentation further improved the highest yield to 8.86 g/L in a fermenter after 96 h of methanol induction. This result is more promising than the previous reports of industrial applications, which reported the highest yield as 92.29 mg/L/h, considering that the space-time yield of rHSA was doubled. In addition, the desired protein was purified by filtration and Cibacron Blue affinity chromatography, which yielded a 58% recovery of a product that had over a 96% purity. This study reveals that Pichia pastoris is an excellent system for recombinant human serum albumin expression due to its outstanding expression capacity. In addition, the high efficiency level of rHSA production lays a solid foundation for its use in industrial production.