Detection of Rubisco and mycotoxins as potential contaminants of a plantibody against the hepatitis B surface antigen purified from tobacco

Antibodies have been one of the proteins widely expressed in tobacco plants for pharmaceutical purposes, which demand contaminant free preparations. Rubisco constitutes 40–60% of tobacco leaf soluble proteins; therefore it is the major potential protein contaminant of plantibodies, while mycotoxins are toxic compounds that could be introduced during the biomass production and post-harvest stages with important consequences to human health. The objective of this paper was to investigate whether Rubisco and mycotoxins are present in Plantibody HB-01 preparations used in the immunopurification of the hepatitis B surface antigen. Rubisco was purified from Nicotiana tabacum yielding 154 μg of protein per gram of leaves and purity over 95%. Among mouse monoclonal antibodies generated against this enzyme, the CBSS.Rub-2 was selected for its immunodetection. It recognizes a conserved sequential epitope of Rubisco large subunit with an affinity constant of 0.13 × 108 M−1. Rubisco quantification limit was 1 μg spreading to the measurement of this contaminant less than 4% of plantibodies samples. Additionally, according to a Reverse Phase-HPLC used to measure the level of adventitiously introduced contaminants, it can be concluded that aflatoxins B1, B2, G1 and G2 were undetected in the purified Plantibody HB-01 samples.