Design and Synthesis of Compound-specific Haptens for Aflatoxins
Aflatoxin is a related metabolite of mold in structure, easy to contaminate plants, has a strong toxic effect on humans and belongs to a strong carcinogen. Adequate and highly specific antibodies are essential for the accurate detection and analysis of aflatoxin. To this end, Creative Biolabs has launched aflatoxin hapten design and synthesis services. Our professional scientists have rich experience to help our clients complete their testing programs.
Fig.1 Conversion of AFB1 and AFG1 to AFB2-GA and AFG2-GA and subsequent coupling to BSA via N-hydroxysuccinimide-ester. (Cervino, 2007)
Introduce of Aflatoxins Haptens
Due to the molecular size and physical and chemical properties of most aflatoxins, it is generally not possible to trigger immune system reactions in animals to produce antibodies, which brings many difficulties to the related detection work. Therefore, these small molecules need to be modified to stably produce specific antibodies. It is common practice to link them with larger proteins to synthesize haptens, enable to generate selective polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies by animal immunity.
In general, when using protein conjugates as immunogens, the design of the hapten will have a significant impact on the properties of the resulting antibody, such as sensitivity (affinity constant). In any case, the binding process should affect the structure of the toxin as little as possible, which is necessary to produce high-affinity antibodies. From a structural point of view, aflatoxin B1 has a tetrahydro cyclopenta tetrahydrofuran chromene skeleton of aflatoxin at positions 1, 4, and 11 at an oxygen functionality. At present, the more popular method is to bind the protein at position 1 through a carboxymethyloxime (CMO) spacer. However, for some microarray toxin detection and antibody-based multidimensional analysis methods, the conventional immunogen AFB1-CMO protein is difficult to obtain ideal results. To this end, it is necessary to design more specific hapten molecules according to the differences in the molecular structure of different aflatoxins.
Compound-specific Hapten Design and Synthesis Service
In order to achieve significantly different cross-reaction patterns, Creative Biolabs provides customers with compound-specific aflatoxin hapten design and synthesis services. We use a simple, fast, and reliable method to couple aflatoxins B1 and G1 by the reaction of the enol ether group of aflatoxin with glycolic acid. We can provide different coupling schemes to design aflatoxin hapten molecules according to customer requirements. For example, it is prepared under dry conditions and uses glycolic acid as a spacer to form an aflatoxin acetal on one side and uses a carboxylic acid group for subsequent coupling to the protein. These aflatoxin protein conjugates can be used as ideal immunogens to help customers produce specific aflatoxin selective antibodies.
If you want to inquire more about our compound-specific aflatoxins hapten design and synthesis services, please contact us.
Reference
- Cervino, C.; et al. Novel aflatoxin derivatives and protein conjugates[J]. Molecules. 2007, 12(3): 641-653.