Quantitation of Thyroid Hormone Binding to Anti-Thyroxine Antibody Fab Fragment by Native Mass Spectrometry

Thyroid hormones are important regulatory hormones, acting on nearly every cell in the body. The two main thyroid hormones are l-thyroxine (tetraiodo-l-thyronine, T₄) and 3,3′,5-triiodo-l-thyronine (T₃), which are produced in the thyroid gland and secreted into the blood stream. Other important thyroid hormone metabolites are 3,3′-diiodo-l-thyronine (T₂) and l-thyronine (T₀), which may show increased levels in circulation due to dietary iodine deficiency or other medical disorders. Owing to their central role in cellular functions, sensitive and specific detection methods for thyroid hormones are needed. In this work, native mass spectrometry (MS) was used to quantitate thyroid hormone binding to the anti-T₄ antibody Fab fragment. First, the binding affinity for T₂ was determined via direct ligand titration experiments. Then, the affinities for the other ligands were determined by competition experiments using T₂ as the "low-affinity" reference ligand. The highest affinity was measured for T₃, followed by T₄, T₂, and T₀ (K_d = 29, 3.4, and 260 nM and 130 μM, respectively). Thus, it is evident that the number and positions of the iodine substituents within the thyronine rings are important for the ligand binding affinity of anti-T₄ Fab. Surprisingly, structurally related tetrahalogen bisphenols were also able to bind to anti-T₄ Fab with nanomolar affinities.