Development of a Spectrophotometric Biphasic Assay for the Estimation of mPEG-maleimide in Thiol PEGylation Reaction Mixtures

Methoxy(polyethylene glycol)-maleimide (mPEG-mal) is a PEG derivative used for thiol PEGylation of protein molecules and finds application in drug delivery studies. The maleimide group undergoes degradation in aqueous media, resulting in the difficult quantitative analysis of mPEG-mal. Routinely employed methods for separation and estimation of mPEG-mal include tedious chromatographic methods like ion exchange, high-performance liquid chromatography with refractive index detector and techniques like mass spectrometry and proton nuclear magnetic resonance. We present a direct and reproducible spectrophotometric method to quantify free and protein bound mPEG-mal in thiol PEGylation reaction mixtures. This method is based on the partitioning of a PEG bound chromophore between an aqueous ammonium isoferrothiocyanate phase to a chloroform phase in the presence of mPEG-mal. Several important parameters influencing the partitioning and stability of the chromophore, volume ratios of liquid phases, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid concentration in the reaction mixture, mixing time, and chlorinated solvents used for partitioning have been studied.