Design and Synthesis of Haptens for Chromium
With advanced hapten design platforms and powerful technologies, Creative Biolabs is proud to offer the best-fit proposal of the design and synthesis of chromium haptens to meet specific project requirements. The design of the best-fit chemical structure of immunogen for chromium plays a critical role in tailoring the specificity of produced antibodies and the development of a sensitive and specific chromium immunoassay.
Contamination of Chromium
Chromium is one of the transition metals that are not biodegradable. Different forms of chromium (Cr3 and Cr6) cause different levels of toxicity to the environment and humans; among them, the Cr6 form of chromium is considered as an environmental pollutant and carcinogen owing to the high oxidative potential. Skin contact or high systemic exposure to chromium in the human may trigger cutaneous and/or systemic hypersensitivity reactions. The accumulation of chromium beyond certain concentrations could cause various diseases, such as fibroproliferative disease, airway hypersensitivity, lung cancer, nasal cancer, and other types of cancer. Chromium contamination is a potential threat to human health; thus, the rapid and methods to monitor and quantify chromium is an important task for the determination of the cadmium concentration in the environment.
Fig.1 Synthesis of iEDTA-Chromium-BSA. (Liu, 2012)
Chromium-chelate Complexes as Haptens
Immunoassays are used as sensitive and reliable techniques for chromium detection, which rely on the development of specific antibodies to identify chromium. The molecular weight of chromium is too low to elicit an immune response so that chromium is nonimmunogenic to be a complete epitope. To increase the likelihood of inducing chromium specific antibodies, bifunctional chelators can be used for conjugating carriers and chromium to synthesis chromium-chelate protein complexes as complete immunogens. In some previous studies, chromium-EDTA-BSA or chromium-ITCBE-BSA was already identified to be formed as a high immunogenic epitope to induce specific antibodies. These results indicate that the conjugation of chromium-chelate protein complexes is sufficient for the generation of high-affinity antibodies directed toward chelated chromium.
Design and Synthesis of Haptens for Chromium
Based on our advanced hapten design platform, scientists at Creative Biolabs can select the best-fit chelators and carriers for chromium. We can also design and modify the optimal synthesis strategy further to prepare the appropriate hapten-carrier complexes that would maximize the exposure of these metal ions. Chromium ions can be chelated with bifunctional chelating agents firstly and then conjugated with carriers respectively to complete antigens. There are a series of suitable bifunctional metal chelating agents for these metals, such as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and their derivates, which can be used to covalently couple chromium to carrier proteins (KLH, BSA, or OVA) in the proper molecular environment for use as an immunogen. Antibodies produced against chromium are induced with these appropriate metal-carrier complexes (antigens) based on the superior ability to retain their metal ions, these antibodies can be used to develop competitive immunoassays for the detection of chromium.
The synthesis of suitable haptens for chromium could be a promising tool for developing the specific antibodies and the sensitive determination of chromium or many other applications. Creative Biolabs provides excellent services for the design and synthesis of chromium haptens for our worldwide customers. If you are interested in our services, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Reference
- Liu, X.; et al. Colloidal gold nanoparticle probe-based immunochromatographic assay for the rapid detection of chromium ions in water and serum samples. Analytica chimica acta. 2012, 745: 99-105.