Enzyme reference materials preparation

In 1960, at the general assembly of the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP), the obsolescence of various national pharmacopeial methods for assaying pharmaceutical enzymes was demonstrated. An international commission on pharmaceutical enzymes was created to deal with this unsatisfactory situation and develop improved assay methods and guidelines for the preparation of pharmaceutical enzyme reference materials. The Center for Standards has a coordination function in organizing collaborative enzyme assays between academic, industrial, and national pharmaceutical control laboratories and in distributing FIP pharmaceutical enzyme standards. Since 1960, many FIP assay methods and standard preparations have been adopted by national and international pharmacopeias, such as the European Pharmacopoeia. The ultimate goal is to provide official, preferentially nonempirical, standardized assay methods by which comparison of commercially available pharmaceutical enzymes is made possible. The most desirable situation would be an international uniformity of enzyme standards and assay methods, which would allow physicians and clinicians to unambiguously compare the potencies of commercially available enzyme products. 

The requirements for, preparation of, and application of enzyme reference materials have been discussed extensively (134, 135, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158). Cooperation among clinical enzvmologists in Europe and the United States over the last several years has resulted in the availability of only a few enzyme reference materials. SRM 8430 from NIST is a preparation of human erythrocyte aspartate aminotransferase in a human albumin matrix (144) certified reference material (CRM) 319 from the Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) of the Commission of the European Communities is a preparation of porcine y-glutamvltransferase in a bovine serum matrix (159). The working group of the BCR is in the process of establishing protocols and evaluating... 

Characterisation of the enzyme-responsive material prepared through the methods outlined above is essential not only to test the enzyme responsiveness of the polymer but also to characterise the material s overall performance under the conditions in which it will be used in its ultimate application. This section will provide a brief overview of standard and specialised techniques that have been employed for this purpose and covers mechanical, chemical, physical and biological properties as well as enzyme responsiveness. While we will discuss the reason for choosing particular techniques and explain their advantages and Umitations in the context of the analysis of enzyme-responsive materials, explanations of the working principles of the techniques will not be provided and the reader is referred to other specialised textbooks on this topic instead. 

There are also RMs which are prepared for a specific application and are used for validation of relevant methods. Cobbaert et al. (1999) made use of Ion Selective Electrode (ISE)-protein-based materials when evaluating a procedure which used an electrode with an enzyme-linked biosensor to determine glucose and lactate in blood. Chance et al. (1999) are involved with the diagnosis of inherited disorders in newborn children and they prepared a series of reference materials consisting of blood spotted onto filter paper and dried, from which amino-acids can be eluted and... 

Type I water should be used in test methods requiring minimal interference and maximal precision and accuracy. Such procedures include trace metal, enzyme, and electrolyte measurements, and preparation of aU calibrators and solutions of reference materials. This water should be used immediately after production. No specifications for storage systems for type I water are given because it is not possible to maintain the high resistivity while drawing off water and storing it. 

Currendy, measurement of enzymes is based on catalytic-activity measurements, and these depend on the experimental conditions under which the enzyme is measured. It is often difficult to compare enzyme results from different laboratories or to those reported in the literature. Efforts to improve interlaboratory comparability in enzyme measurements (129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134) have concentrated on two aspects standardization of methodology and preparation of reference materials (135). 

Immunological methods for enzymes, more specifically isoenzymes, such as lactate dehydrogenase-1 (167, 168), mitochondrial aspartate aminotransferase (169), prostatic acid phosphatase (170, 171,172), and creatine kinase-MB (173, 174, 175), have been in use in the clinical laboratory for 10 years. However, the use of the immunological rather than catalytic properties of enzymes has not provided the opportunities for standardization that was anticipated a number of years ago (176, 177, 178). It is only within the last year that a working group on CK-MB mass assay was formed under the auspices of the Standards Committee of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC). The objective of this working group is to prepare a reference material to calibrate methods that are based on the principle of CK-MB mass measurement. 

An alternative strategy to obtain silica immobilised catalysts, pioneered by Panster [23], is via the polycondensation or co-condensation of ligand functionalised alkoxysilanes. This co-condensation, later also referred to as the sol-gel process [24], appeared to be a very mild technique to immobilise catalysts and is also used for enzyme immobilisation. Several novel functional polymeric materials have been reported that enable transition metal complexation. 3-Chloropropyltrialkoxysilanes were converted into functionalised propyltrialkoxysilanes such as diphenylphosphine propyltrialkoxysilane. These compounds can be used to prepare surface modified inorganic materials. Two different routes towards these functional polymers can be envisioned (Figure 3.4). One can first prepare the metal complex and then proceed with the co-condensation reaction (route I), or one can prepare the metal complex after the... 

Asymmetric synthesis refers to the conversion of an achiral starting material to a chiral product in a chiral environment. It is presently the most powerful and commonly used method for chiral molecule preparation. Thus far, most of the best asymmetric syntheses are catalyzed by enzymes, and the challenge before us today is to develop chemical systems as efficient as the enzymatic ones. 

The sol-gel process is the name given to a number of processes in which a solution, or sol, undergoes a sol-gel transition. In this broadest sense, the term sol-gel refers to the preparation of inorganic oxides by wet chemical methods, irrespective of final form product—monolith, crystalline, or amorphous (1). Using sol-gel materials for mechanical entrapment of enzymes permitted stabilization of the proteins, tertiary structure owing to the tight gel network (2). Moreover, the easy insertion of substituent groups into... 

Besides cellulolytic enzyme lignin, the so-called Bjorkman lignin, alternatively referred to as "milled wood lignin" (MWL) is the best preparation known so far, and it has been widely used for structural studies. When wood meal is ground in a ball mill either dry or in the presence of nonswelling solvents, e.g., toluene, the cell structure of the wood is destroyed and a portion of lignin (usually not more than 50%) can be obtained from the suspension by extraction with a dioxane-water mixture. MWL preparations always contain some carbohydrate material. 

Linearity of a method should be established or a series of standards selected for use with non-linear-method calibration. This can be checked by preparing and analyzing serial dilutions of aqueous reference standard solutions, quality control materials, enzyme solutions, or commercially available materials for demonstrating linearity (again, these are designed for use in human medicine) and comparing the determined values with the theoretical values calculated for the dilutions. The serial dilutions used for linearity checks can also help establish the analytical sensitivity when defined as the minimal detectable change from one concentration to another. 

Polymers and biopolymers are indispensable materials in pharmacy. The number and importance of polymer-structured active substances (e.g. enzymes, hormones, and antibiotics) are increasing continuously. Interesting references to auxiliary materials of polymeric character were already made as long ago as in the ancient written records on medicines, e.g. Ebers Papyrus, the Bible, or Greek epics. Karl Thoma, one of the most prominent researchers in this field, talked about the explosive increase of auxiliary materials used in modern drug preparations. 

A three-enzyme electrode system, such as needed for creatinine measurement, poses a more difficult enzyme-immobilisation problem, in that different enzymes have different immobilisation requirements and their microenvironmental interrelationships need to be optimised. For one creatine sensor, the requisite creatine amidinohydrolase and sarcosine oxidase were immobihsed in polyurethane pre-polymer and PEG-hnked creatinine amidohydrolase was attached via diisocyanate pre-polymer to create a polyurethane adduct [14]. The likelihood of enzyme inactivation with chemical immobih-sation is high, but provided an enzyme preparation survives this, long-term stability is feasible. In the case of these three particular enzymes, a loss of activity resulted from silver ions diffusing from the reference electrode the material solution was to protect the enzyme layer with a diffusion-resisting cellulose acetate membrane. 

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