Improved accuracy in pentraxin-3 quantification assisted by aqueous biphasic systems as serum pretreatment strategies.

Although pentraxin-3 holds promise as a diagnosis/prognosis biomarker of microbial infections and lung cancer, its analysis in human serum can be constrained by matrix effects caused by high abundance proteins - human serum albumin and immunoglobulin G. Aqueous biphasic systems composed of polymers and citrate buffer are here proposed as a serum pretreatment step to improve the accuracy of pentraxin-3 analysis. Binodal curves were determined to identify the compositions required to form two phases and to correlate the polymers' properties and performance in serum pretreatment and biomarker extraction.

Glycine-betaine ionic liquid analogues as novel phase-forming components of aqueous biphasic systems.

Given the biotechnology advances observed in recent years in terms of upstream, the development of effective downstream processes becomes mandatory to decrease the associated costs of biotechnological-based products. Although a large interest has been devoted to ionic-liquid-based aqueous biphasic systems (IL-based ABS) as tailored separation platforms, imidazolium-based ILs have been the preferred choice as phase-forming agents. To overcome some toxicity and biodegradability issues associated to imidazolium-based ILs, novel ABS composed of ILs analogues of glycine-betaine (AGB-ILs) are here proposed and investigated.