Immobilized hirudin and hirudin-based peptides used for the purification of recombinant human thrombin prepared from recombinant human prothrombin

A simple and efficient activation-affinity purification system was developed to obtain thrombin from recombinant CHO cells expressing human prothrombin. In this method, a controllable process for the activation of recombinant prothrombin is directly coupled with a purification strategy for the recombinant thrombin generated. At a constant flow rate and with a contact time limited to few seconds, recombinant prothrombin was filtered through immobilized trypsin. In a closed flow system, the recombinant thrombin generated was filtered through newly designed thrombin-specific affinity gels. Hirudin, the most specific thrombin inhibitor, and hirudin-based peptides were covalently immobilized to Sepharose, thus creating thrombin-specific affinity gels that immediately absorb the thrombin generated from the activation mixture. Prothrombin and incompletely activated molecules did not bind to the affinity gel and were recirculated for a further activation cycle. Due to the specificity of the affinity gels for thrombin and the elimination of thrombin from the activation mixture, proteolytic degradation and autocatalytic inactivation of the recombinant thrombin was prevented. Recombinant thrombin was isolated from the hirudin-based affinity gels by chaotrope salt elution, resulting in high yields of highly pure, active thrombin. Affinity purification of thrombin was not deleteriously affected by contamination of the starting material with other proteins. Activation and affinity purification were equally effective for recombinant and human plasma-derived prothrombin as well as for human and recombinant thrombin.