Expression of biologically active kringle 5 domain of human plasminogen in Escherichia coli

The kringle 5 domain of plasminogen exhibits potent inhibitory effect on endothelial cell proliferation. It can also cause cell cycle arrest and apoptosis of endothelial cell specifically, and shows promise in anti-angiogenic therapy. It has been prepared via both proteolysis of native plasminogen and recombinant DNA methodologies. When previously expressed in Escherichia coli, recombinant kringle 5 mainly deposited as inactive, insoluble inclusion bodies and the refolding yield was low. In the present study, human kringle 5 was fusion-expressed with GST (gluthathione-S-transferase) under the control of T7 promoter in E. coli. The IPTG-induced GST-kringle 5 was about 20% of the total cellular proteins and, among the expressed GST-kringle 5 proteins, 80% was present in the supernatant. The GST-kringle 5 fusion protein exhibited some anti-proliferation activity towards bovine capillary endothelial cells. After GST-kringle 5 purification, subsequent enterokinase release of intact kringle 5 from the fusion protein and further purification by gluthathione-Sepharose 4B affinity chromatography, the recombinant kringle 5, with a yield of 10.5 mg/L culture, displayed apparent inhibition of endothelial cell proliferation in a dose-dependent manner with ED50 about 20 nM.