pH-dependent selective separation of acidic and basic proteins using quaternary ammoniation functionalized cysteine-zwitterionic stationary phase with RPLC/IEC mixed-mode chromatography.

In this paper, a cysteine-functionalized zwitterionic stationary phase (Cys-silica) was prepared based on the "thiol-ene" click chemistry between cysteine and vinyl-functionalized silica, and was further modified with bromoethane, 1-bromooctane and 1-bromooctadecane, respectively, to obtain a series of quaternary ammoniation-functionalized stationary phases (Cys-silica-Cn, n = 2, 8 and 18). These zwitterionic stationary phases were regarded as reversed-phase/ion-exchange (RP/IEC) mixed-mode chromatography (MMC) stationary phases for protein separation. The retention behaviors of proteins on these zwitterionic stationary phases were carefully investigated. The results indicated that the retentions of acidic and basic proteins on these zwitterinonic stationary phases were significantly influenced by the acetonitrile and salt concentrations, pH of mobile phase as well as the hydrophobicity of the ligand. The separation selectivity of proteins on these zwitterionic stationary phases strongly depended on the pH value of mobile phase. The baseline separation of 6 kinds of basic proteins can be achieved at pH 8.0 using Cys-silica-C2 or Cys-silica-C8 column, and 5 kinds of acidic proteins can also be separated completely at pH 4.0 with Cys-silica-C2 column. Moreover, owing to the quaternary ammoniation-functionalization on Cys-silica by using appropriately hydrophobic bromoalkanes, the selectivity and separation efficiency of proteins can be enhanced greatly. As a result, the acidic and basic proteins can be separated completely step by step from the complex sample by adjusting pH of mobile phase using a single Cys-silica-C2 column, which illustrates that the cysteine-functionalized zwitterionic stationary phase has a great potential for protein separation.

Correction: A multi-center randomized prospective study on the treatment of infant bronchiolitis with interferon α1b nebulization.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228391.].

A multi-center randomized prospective study on the treatment of infant bronchiolitis with interferon α1b nebulization.

BACKGROUND: The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the main cause of bronchiolitis in infants and interferon (IFN) α is a commercial antiviral drug. The nebulization of IFN α1b could be a viable treatment method. In this study, the therapeutic effects and safety of IFN α1b delivery via nebulization in infant bronchiolitis were investigated in this multi-center prospective study. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Bronchiolitis patients admitted to 22 hospitals who met the inclusion criteria were enrolled and randomly allocated to four groups: control, IFN Intramuscular Injection, IFN Nebulization 1 (1 µg/kg), and IFN Nebulization 2 (2 µg/kg) groups. All patients were observed for 7 days. The therapeutic effects and safety of different IFN delivery doses and delivery modes were evaluated. Coughing severity change, as scored by the researchers and parents, between days 1 and 3 was significantly different between the IFN Nebulization 2 and control groups. Lowell wheezing score change between days 3 and 5 was significantly different between IFN Nebulization 1 and control groups. There were no significant differences among the four groups regarding the number of consecutive days with fever, three-concave sign, fatigue and sleepiness, and loss of appetite. There were no cases of severe complications, no recurrence of fever, and no regression of mental status. CONCLUSIONS: IFN-α1b could more effectively alleviate coughing and wheezing in bronchiolitis. IFN-α1b nebulization had significant advantages in shortening the duration of wheezing and alleviating coughing.

Synthesis and optimization of SiO2@SiO2 core-shell microspheres by an improved polymerization-induced colloid aggregation method for fast separation of small solutes and proteins.

Recently, superficially porous particles (SPPs) have been intensively studied and employed for highly efficient and fast separations. In this paper, the SiO2@SiO2 SPPs were synthesized by an improved polymerization-induced colloid aggregation (PICA) method using urea-formaldehyde polymer as the template. The agglomeration of silica core during modification with ureidopropyltrimethoxysilane (UPS) can not only be avoided by reflux in neutral ethanol solution, but also the secondary nucleation of the colloidal silica sol can be inhibited via optimizing the reaction conditions including pH, temperature, colloidal silica sol concentration and the reaction time. The shell thickness and pore size of SPPs can be controlled successfully by adjusting the weight ratio of silica core/colloidal silica sol and the particle size of colloidal silica sol, respectively. The SPP-C18 columns packed using octadecyltrichlorosilane (ODS) modified SPPs with different pore sizes were employed to separate small solutes and proteins. The baseline separations of 6 kinds of alkyl benzenes and 5 kinds of aromatic alcohol homologues were achieved within 4 min by the SPP-C18 column with 8 nm pore size. Compared with the commercial BEH-C18 column, more than 50,000/m of the plate number of propylbenzene was obtained, and the former provided higher column efficiency to separate small solutes than the latter. Meanwhile, 6 kinds of proteins were also separated completely within 2 min using the SPP-C18 column with 40 nm pore size. In addition, the SPP-C18 capillary column was applied to separate and identify the BSA/HeLa/mouse liver digests with capillary LC-MSMS, respectively. The results indicate that more proteins and peptides can be identified using SPP-C18 capillary column compared with commercial silica-C18 capillary column. The result demonstrates that the prepared SPP-C18 column provides higher column efficiency and the SPPs synthesized with the improved PICA method shows a great potential application for the fast separation of small solutes and proteins.

Preparation and characterization of monodisperse large-porous silica microspheres as the matrix for protein separation.

High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is a kind of efficient separation technology and has been used widely in many fields. Micro-sized porous silica microspheres as the most popular matrix have been used for fast separation and analysis in HPLC. In this paper, the monodisperse large-porous silica microspheres with controllable size and structure were successfully synthesized with polymer microspheres as the templates and characterized. First, the poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate) microspheres (PGMA-EDMA) were functionalized with tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA) to generate amino groups which act as a catalyst in hydrolysis of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) to form Si-containing low molecular weight species. Then the low molecular weight species diffused into the functionalized PGMA-EDMA microspheres by induction force of the amino groups to form polymer/silica hybrid microspheres. Finally, the organic polymer templates were removed by calcination, and the large-porous silica microspheres were obtained. The compositions, morphology, size distribution, specific surface area and pore size distribution of the porous silica microspheres were characterized by infrared analyzer, scanning-electron microscopy, dynamic laser scattering, the mercury intrusion method and thermal gravimetric analysis, respectively. The results show that the agglomeration of the hybrid microspheres can be overcome when the templates were functionalized with TEPA as amination reagent, and the yield of 95.7% of the monodisperse large-porous silica microspheres can be achieved with high concentration of polymer templates. The resulting large-porous silica microspheres were modified with octadecyltrichlorosilane (ODS) and the chromatographic evaluation was performed by separating the proteins and the digest of BSA. The baseline separation of seven kinds of protein standards was achieved, and the column delivered a better performance when separating BSA digests comparing with the commercial one currently available. The high column efficiency and good reproducibility present that the large-porous silica microspheres obtained can be used as a matrix for peptide and protein separation.