Arginine as an effective additive in gel permeation chromatography

A major problem in gel permeation chromatography (GPC) or size exclusion chromatography is non-specific binding of applied proteins to the column matrix (stationary phase). We have tested an aqueous arginine solution as the GPC mobile phase on silica-based and polymer-based columns, using mouse monoclonal antibody and recombinant human activin, interleukin-6, basic fibroblast growth factor, and interferon-γ as model proteins. We observed that addition of arginine to the mobile phase improves separation of the proteins and their soluble aggregates from the GPC columns, which suggests that arginine is an effective additive for the GPC mobile phase.