Review applications of capillary electrophoresis to the analysis of biotechnology-derived therapeutic proteins

The number of proteins produced by recombinant DNA technology continues to grow at a rapid pace. In this review, the emphasis is on proteins that are of therapeutic interest. Aspects of protein analysis, such as glycoform separation of proteins produced in mammalian cells and the separation of oligosaccharides for structure elucidation, are covered. The use of antibodies as therapeutic proteins is growing and currently antibodies are the largest class of proteins produced by biotechnology. This has merited a separate section on analysis of antibodies by capillary electrophoresis (CE). Applications of mass spectrometry as an ancillary technique, used in conjunction with CE, are also covered briefly. This review covers the literature since 1999.