Design and Synthesis of Haptens for Lead
The small size and simple structure of lead ions result in poor immunogenicity; as such, they are classified as haptens which need to be designed and synthesized in a variety of formats. With over years’ extensive professional experience and advanced hapten design and synthesis platforms, scientists at Creative Biolabs are confident in designing and optimizing the best-fit lead haptens in a high-quality manner to help developing a rapid and sensitive immunoassay to measure lead ion.
Contamination of Lead
Lead is one of the most abundant and ubiquitous heavy metal. Lead often shows particular toxicity in the environment, which results in severe lead contamination that is a worldwide serious environmental problem. Lead is present in the environment as a result of widespread use in a variety of industrial products and processes, such as gasoline, paint, battery, printing, and smelting. The predominant sources of human lead exposure involve contaminated water and food and lead-containing soil, and dust. Lead exposure may affect immune function and result in type I hypersensitivity. The excessive lead results in lead accumulation and toxicity in the human body. It could interfere with the activity in the central nervous system and cause gastrointestinal tract and kidney damage. It is associated with the etiology of a variety of serious diseases, including hypertension, cardiovascular, kidney, nervous, and bone diseases.
Fig.1 Synthesis of lead-chelate complexes.
Lead-chelate Complexes as Haptens
Unavoidable lead contamination constitutes a serious threat to human health with particular worrisome concern. Fast and sensitive immunoassay methods for the identification and monitoring of lead contamination are advantageous for protecting human health in great demand. These techniques are based on the detection of antibodies in which the design and synthesis of a complete lead antigen are the key steps. Heavy metals such as lead are typically classified as haptens because the molecular weight of lead is small, and it can not exhibit immunogenicity. Recently, lead conjugated to keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) via a bifunctional chelator DTPA is effective as haptens in generating highly specific antibodies against lead.
Design and Synthesis of Haptens for Lead
Antibodies against lead-chelate complexes are great promising analytical tools for rapid and sensitive determination of lead ions in food and the environment. Creative Biolabs provides the design and synthesis services of haptens for lead, and we will select the highly effective bifunctional chelating agents to connect the lead ions and the carrier proteins. The chelators such as EDTA, DTPA, and CHXDTPA have shown a high affinity for lead. The lead-chelate complexes of interest may also of insufficient size to elicit an immune response; therefore, the lead-loaded chelate covalently linked to a carrier protein (KLH, BSA, or OVA) is promising to be used as a complete immunogen. Changing the different chelators, the carrier proteins used, and the structure of the immobilized metal-chelate complex may contribute to the modulation and increasing the specificity and sensitivity of immunoassays. These modifications and optimizations of haptens could make it possible to obtain high-affinity antibodies and detect lead or lead-chelate complex at levels below the threshold.
The availability of lead haptens could provide the basis to generate specific antibodies; Creative Biolabs offers the best-quality hapten design and synthesis service. Please feel free to contact us for more information if you are interested in our services.