Polymer resins with amino acid containing pendants for sorption of bilirubin. II. Polyamide resins with various basic amino acids.

Short peptides, three to eight amino acids in length, containing various combinations of alanine, arginine, lysine, histidine and tyrosine have been synthesized onto water-swellable polyamide resin by the solid phase peptide synthesis method. The amount of bilirubin adsorbed from aqueous buffer solution (pH = 7.8) by the resins increases with increasing basicity of the amino acids in the pendant. As the number of basic amino acids on the pendant is increased from one to five a 4.7 fold enhancement in the adsorption capacity is seen for arginine while a 9.3 fold enhancement is obtained for lysine. A corresponding increase in length for the non-basic histidine results in a 6 fold enhancement. With alanine the adsorption capacity is uneffected by an increase in pendant length.