Abstract (eng)
One of the greatest challenges in medicine today is the fight against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. A defining pathological feature is the formation of plaques in the extracellular regions of the brain with the β-Amyloid (Aβ40, Aβ42) peptide being the main component of this deposit. Therefore, the study of this peptide gives the opportunity to get a better insight into the processes of this complex disease.
For clinical analysis one needs suitable standards, but it is not an easy task to find them, since only a few are commercially available, and these vary in their purity. Furthermore, the determination of absolute concentration in most protein standards is performed in a non-traceable manner, by e.g. Bradford assay in which albumin is used as a calibrant. Hence, accurate methods are needed to characterize these standards.
The aim of this study was to quantify synthetic β-Amyloid standards (purchased from r-Peptide) by analysing the sulfur-content of its amino acids. For this purpose, an acid-hydrolysis of the peptide was performed. The so obtained individual amino acids were separated by means of a strong anion exchange column and directly analysed with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS/MS) in oxygen mode. Species-specific isotope dilution was applied using an 34S-enriched yeast hydrolysate to correct for potential losses within sample preparation. In order to validate the established method in an appropriate manner for the amino acids, methionine and cysteine, a standard reference material (NIST 2389a) was used. In addition, the commercially available proteins lysozyme and myoglobin were successfully quantified by this procedure. Measuring the whole protein and peptide standards via size exclusion chromatography allowed further characterization of their purity. To prevent sulfur contamination, all consumables were pre-cleaned with nitric acid. Ultimately the combination of HPLC-ICP-MS/MS with species-specific ID allowed us to accurately quantify β-Amyloid standards with high throughput and low volume consumption.