The rigorous control of the quality of biological samples is of major importance in pharmaceutical research. On the one hand, drug discovery projects with purified drug targets such as kinases, receptors or integral membrane proteins require a consistent quality of the proteins to ensure successful screening campaigns. On the other hand, a consistent quality of biologicals such as antibodies or other therapeutic proteins is essential in later stages of the drug development process, especially for tests in clinical trials, and is finally required for approval of new drugs by federal agencies.
Here we demonstrate how the Prometheus NT.48 can be used to investigate the long-term stability of proteins as well as to determine optimal handling conditions by quantifying the fraction of unfolded proteins within seconds.