A novel protein refolding method integrating ion exchange chromatography with artificial molecular chaperone

Abstract Artificial molecular chaperone (AMC) and ion exchange chromatography (IEC) were integrated, thus a new refolding method, artificial molecular chaperone–ion exchange chromatography (AMC–IEC) was developed. Compared with AMC and IEC, the activity recovery of lysozyme obtained by AMC–IEC was much higher in the investigated range of initial protein concentrations, and the results show that AMC–IEC is very efficient for protein refolding at high concentrations. When the initial concentration of lysozyme is 180 mg/mL, its activity recovery obtained by AMC–IEC is still as high as 76.6%, while the activity recoveries obtained by AMC and IEC are 45.6% and 42.4%, respectively.