The proteolysis of VWF by ADAMTS13 in the absence and presence of anti-VWF mAbs was also determined by agarose gel electrophoresis visualizing VWF multimers. We showed that the decreased amount of the high and intermediate molecular weight multimers were dramatically reduced by mAb SZ34 in a concentration-dependent manner under shear stress (Figure 2 ), further confirming the role of SZ34 in decreasing the susceptibility of VWF to proteolytic cleavage by ADAMTS13 under physiologically relevant conditions. SZ34 had no effects on VWF proteolysis by ADAMTS13 under denaturing/static condition When pVWF was pre-denatured with guanidine-HCl before incubation with SZ34 and rADAMTS13, no obvious difference in the 350 kDa cleavage products was detected ( Figure 3 and Purified pVWF (150 nM) was preincubated with SZ34 (0-200 mg/ml) for 30 min at 37uC, and then incubated with 50 nM rADAMTS13. After 5 min of vortexing at 2,500 rpm on a mini vortexer, the 350 kDa cleavage products were visualized by 5% SDS-PAGE under non-reducing conditions and Western blot analysis. 1C1E7 (an anti-VWF D'D3 mAb), SZ129 (an anti-VWF A1 mAb) and SZ123 (an anti-VWF A3 mAb) were used as negative controls. (B) Changes in the cleavage products detected relative to that observed in the absence of mAbs were determined under shear stress by densitometry. The extent of cleavage was analyzed by detection of the intensity of the 350 kDa cleavage products. Results represent the mean 6 standard deviation of four independent experiments. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022157.g001 Table 1 ). Thus, SZ34 had no effect on the digestion of unfolded VWF by ADAMTS13. In the meantime, anti-VWF mAbs including 1C1E7, SZ129, SZ123, etc, exhibited no effects on ADAMTS13-mediated proteolysis of the unfolded VWF under static conditions either ( Figure 3 and Table 1 ).