High pressure treatment of aggregated interferons

Abstract

High pressure to treat aggregated interferons, particularly recombinant human interferon-β, to reduce the aggregate content of interferon material. Highly pure, soluble monomeric recombinant interferon-β is prepared in representative embodiments. Multiple strategies may be used in combination that make nonglycosylated IFN-β more amenable to high pressure treatment. It has been found that refolding yields of high pressure treatment can be significantly improved by use of a combination of strategies, including, or example a pre-treatment of the IFN-β that involves solubilizing and then precipitating the protein. This pre-treatment is particularly effective with respect to recombinant IFN-β inclusion bodies recovered from host cells such as E. coli cells. According to another strategy, refolding under high pressure is much more effective when the refolding reagent incorporating the IFN-β incorporates a zwitterionic surfactant and/or a cholate salt. When a solubilization and precipitation pre-treatment is used, the effectiveness of the high pressure treatment is further enhanced when the refolding reagent incorporating the protein incorporates a disulfide shuffling chemistry such as cysteine/cystine. According to still yet another strategy, high pressure treatment is more effective when using atypically high treatment pressures. When coupled with purification techniques, these strategies singly or in combination provide a low aggregate or substantially aggregate free, biologically active solution. Biologically active solutions comprising nonglycosylated interferon, said interferon comprising less than about 5 weight percent of protein aggregation has been found to exhibit improved PK/PD characteristics.

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