Application of surface plasmon resonance in screening adsorbents and explaining adsorption phenomena using model polymers

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique was developed as an online screening method to identify effective adsorbents for the peptide NH₂-Cys-Thr-Trp-Trp-COOH (CW-4). To validate the SPR technique, several linear polymers containing amino acid residues were synthesized as models of their corresponding adsorbents. SPR screening of all the linear polymers demonstrated that the linear polymer containing phenylalanine residues (PPhe) exhibited the highest affinity for CW-4 among the polymers tested. In accordance with the screening results from SPR, the adsorbent containing phenylalanine (APhe) exhibited the highest adsorption capacity for CW-4. An interesting observation was that the amounts of CW-4 adsorbed on 3 adsorbents were quite small, even though both SPR and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) experiments indicated the presence of interactions between CW-4 and the three polymers. A kinetic analysis performed using SPR technology suggested such a phenomenon was ascribed to the poor stability of the CW-4/polymer complexes; that is, CW-4 associates with the polymers quickly, but it also dissociated quickly. The combined results suggested that SPR was a promising tool to identify the optimal adsorbent for peptides, analyze the interactions contributing to adsorption and explain adsorption phenomena using polymer models.