Erythropoietin (EPO)

Case Study 2 – Erythropoietin (EPO)

EPO is a glycoprotein hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells and is used as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of anaemia. Approximately 40% of its weight due to glycosylation.

Advances in recombinant DNA technology techniques have allowed the production of recombinant EPO for therapeutic use to treat anaemia, for which it was first approved by the FDA in 1989. Glycoscience has since played a major role in bringing improved EPO variants with modified glycosylation components to the market.

One such product Aranesp® from Amgen has been found to have a significantly longer half-life in the body after injection providing improved therapy. It is anticipated that worldwide sales of EPO therapeutic products will continue to grow  as even more effective variants for anaemia treatment are found.

The development of improved, highly sophisticated analytical measurement techniques has been no small contributor to achieving these improvements in therapy.