The thyrotrophin hormone receptor of Graves' disease: overexpression of the extracellular domain in insect cells using recombinant baculovirus, immunoaffinity purification and analysis of autoantibody binding.

Since the cloning of the TSH receptor (TSH-R), the target autoantigen of Graves' disease, the receptor has been expressed in a variety of eukaryotic cells to obtain a functional molecule. Despite this success, the levels of receptor expression have been marginally higher than the extremely low levels found in thyroid cells, preventing any progress on the purification of the molecule. In this study, the large extracellular region of the TSH-R, without the membrane spanning segments, has been expressed in insect cells using recombinant baculovirus to generate substantial quantities of the receptor protein. A monoclonal antibody previously generated to a bacterial TSH-R fusion protein was used to characterize and monitor the expression of the truncated receptor in insect cells. Two polypeptides of 63 and 49 kDa were recognized as the components of the truncated recombinant receptor. The 63 kDa protein was shown to be the glycosylated form of the smaller, 49 kDa, component. Expression in different insect cell lines showed that an increase in expression of approximately tenfold was apparent in High Five cells when compared with Sf21 cells. Very small quantities of the truncated receptor were secreted by the three insect cell lines examined, with the majority of the molecule being retained within the cells. Immunoaffinity purification of milligram quantities of the truncated receptor was achieved using the monoclonal antibody. The availability of the purified TSH-R has allowed the establishment of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to measure autoantibodies in the sera of patients with Graves' disease. Although the truncated receptor interacts with autoantibodies, our results show that it does not bind TSH and differs in this respect from other glycoprotein hormone receptors.