Abstract

ZAMORA, RUBEN; BARCLAY, DEREK  and  VODOVOTZ, YORAM. DIFFERENTIAL ACTIVATION OF RECOMBINANT HUMAN LATENT TRANSFORMING GROWTH FACTOR-β1 (TGF-β1) BY ACID AND HEAT. rev.fac.med [online]. 2007, vol.15, n.2, pp. 177-179. ISSN 0121-5256.

Transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) is a cytokine with many effects on inflammation and immunity. A common and commercially-available method for the detection of TGF-β1 consists of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), which detects active TGF-β1 or total TGF-β1 after activation by transient acidification or treatment with urea. Because of its simplicity, specificity and sensitivity, this method is the best option when working on a cell-free system. Given that some discrepancies can be found in the literature regarding the factors that activate the latent TGF-β1 complex both in vitro and in vivo, this study was performed to compare the effectiveness of acidification vs. heat treatment in activating latent TGF-β1. Our results demonstrate that while both heat and acid treatment activate latent TGF-β1, the former is a more efficient activator of the complex. Our results suggest that published data reporting absolute values of total and active TGF-β1 based solely on this method should be interpreted cautiously and recommend the use of both heat and acidification as positive controls when assaying activation of TGF-β1 using the ELISA detection system.

Keywords : latent TGF-β1 binding proteins; ELISA.