Enhancement of The Stability of Human Growth Hormone by Using Tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane: Molecular Docking and Experimental Analysis

OBJECTIVE: It is so difficult to formulate human growth hormone (hGH) in a solution with high stability and new drug delivery system (NDDs) due to physiochemical instability. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of using Tris as a hGH stabilizer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this experimental study, the role of tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane (Tris) was evaluated as a hGH stabilizing agent in phosphate buffer, as a practical aqueous solution and a media to release NDDs. High- performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and enzyme-linked immune sorbent assay (ELISA) were applied to investigate the stability of hGH in solutions and dynamic light scattering (DLS) was used to measure the effect of Tris on the hydrodynamic size of hGH in aqueous solutions. Ultra violet (UV) spectrophotometry was used to check the hGH spectrum. In computational study, formation of ligand-protein complex of the Tris-hGH, and the intermolecular interactions between Tris and hGH were studied by molecular docking modeling. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that Tris at the optimum concentration, increases hGH stability in aqueous solutions. Also, molecular docking modeling confirmed that amino acid residues such as tyrosine (Tyr), proline (Pro), glutamic acid (Glu), aspartic acid (Asp), leucine (Leu), and phenylalanine (Phe) in hGH structure, were linked with Tris as a ligand. CONCLUSION: It seems that interactions between hGH and Tris are the most important reason for increment of the physicochemical stability of hGH in aqueous solutions containing Tris.