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Production of highly homogeneous and structurally intact recombinant von Willebrand factor multimers by furin‐mediated propeptide removal in vitro

Recombinant human von Willebrand Factor (rvWF), a multimeric glycoprotein essential to haemostasis, has been developed as a potential therapeutic agent for treatment of von Willebrand disease (vWD). Permanent Chinese‐hamster ovary (CHO)‐rvWF cell clones co‐expressing recombinant furin (rfurin) were established in order to ensure complete rvWF propeptide removal [Fischer, Schlokat, Mitterer, Reiter, Mundt, Turecek, Schwarz and Dorner (1995) FEBS Lett. 375, 259–262]. Large quantities of material are required for in vivo tests and clinical studies. This demand is commonly met by achieving high‐yield expression of the desired protein via amplification. Co‐amplification of rfurin, necessary to completely process increasing amounts of rvWF precursor, could not be accomplished, presumably due to lethal effects of overexpressed rfurin for the host cells [Creemers (1994) Ph.D. Thesis, University of Leuven]. Recent reports have inferred that rfurin can only mediate rvWF processing intracellularly [Rehemtulla and Kaufman (1992) Blood 79, 2349–2355; Rehemtulla, Dorner and Kaufman (1992) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 89, 8235–8239]. We report here that rvWF‐precursor processing, however, occurs predominantly extracellularly upon rfurin co‐expression. Mixing experiments employing rfurin‐ as well as rvWF‐precursor‐containing conditioned media demonstrate that rvWF precursors are accessible and cleavable by rfurin in vitro. Exposure to rfurin in vitro converts the heterogeneous multimer pattern typical of incompletely processed rvWF multimers into highly homogeneous and structurally intact multimers superior to the ones exhibited by plasma‐derived vWF. These findings thus demonstrate the feasibility of large‐scale production of a completely processed, intact and homogeneous rvWF preparation, based on individual rvWF‐precursor high‐yield expression and subsequent propeptide removal by rfurin in vitro.