Incomplete delivery translates into unmet patient health care needs and increased treatment costs.
We found rapid, tenfold losses in delivered IL-2 activity. Our mechanistic understanding of the IL-2 denaturation process during delivery enabled us to formulate several strategies to mitigate these activity losses. Towards this end, we have developed a kinetic model for protein-surface interactions using a population balance method that explicitly includes the structural state of the protein as a continuous variable. In this approach, care must be taken to minimize excluded volume effects. Still other strategies, including alternative catheter materials, covalent modification of the catheter tubing or covalent modification of the protein itself, may offer relief from observed activity losses.