Direct analysis of differentiation proteins in normal and leukemic human granulocytes by high-performance liquid chromatography.

The feasibility of the use of reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) for detecting differences in the protein phenotypes of highly purified fractions of normal and chronic myelogenous leukemic (CML) mature granulocytes isolated from peripheral blood was determined. At least 21 protein peaks were consistently and reproducibly detected in the RP-HPLC profiles of acetonitrile-trifluoroacetic acid extracts of normal granulocytes. This assay takes only 60 minutes to perform and can be done on 4 X 10(6) granulocytes (approximately the number of granulocytes in 1 ml normal blood). Furthermore, sodium dodecyl sulfate-gel electrophoresis of the RP-HPLC fractions provides a second dimension to the analysis of the polypeptide pattern of these cell lysates. Analyses of subcellular fractions by these methods revealed that most of the major peaks in the RP-HPLC profiles of intact granulocytes originate mainly from the granule and membrane fractions. Although the protein phenotypes of mature granulocytes were remarkably uniform among normal individuals, those of mature granulocytes obtained from the blood of CML patients were consistently abnormal and varied considerably among individual patients. The results indicate that the approach used here could have useful application in the study of abnormal granulocyte differentiation in leukemia.