A micro-scale method employing surface plasmon resonance detection for the determination of conditions for immunoaffinity chromatography of proteins

Summary The BIAcore^TM Biosensor System utilizes a detection principle known as Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) which, in simple terms, detects changes in the refractive index of a solution in contact with a gold film. The gold film is surface modified with carboxymethylated dextran to produce a hydrophillic matrix onto which macromolecules may be covalently immobilized. In this respect, the BIAcore^TM is similar to any other insoluble matrix, such as a chromatographic support. The SPR detection principle, however, allows one to directly visualize the interaction under study, in real time and without the need for reporter molecules such as enzyme-labels. In addition, the very small sample requirements, automated robotics unit and ease of data analysis suggest the potential use of the BIAcore^TM instrumentation for assay development and possibly process development, especially where bio-specific interactions such as immunoaffinity chromatography are used as a step in the process. In this report, we demonstrate the use of the BIAcore^TM SPR detector for the micro-scale determination of conditions for immunoaffinity chromatography of soluble complementreceptor 1, sCR1.