Purification of transthyretin by high performance affinity chromatography from human plasma

The partial purification of human transthyretin (TTR) by high performance affinity chromatography with the help of other separation techniques is described in the present paper. A new affinity medium was prepared with a monosized (ca. 10 microns particle size) macroporous resin as the support and thyroxine (T4) as the ligand. The purification of TTR was carried out in a few simple steps involving serum precipitation, anion exchange, Thyroxine affinity chromatography and gel filtration. The overall yield was 29% and the refined TTR contained less than 2% impurities as analyzed by RP-HPLC. When TTR was administrated to the culture medium DMEM of liver tumor strain SMMC-7721, a true inhibition of cell growth (ca. 50%) was observed as an actual decrease in cell number over time.