Development of simple purification method for oligonucleotides synthesized using phosphoramidite for 5′-end modification as capping reagent

Abstract

Oligonucleotide therapeutics are generally prepared via solid-phase synthesis, and many impurities derived from the synthesis process are present in crude oligonucleotides. Among the various impurities typical of oligonucleotide synthesis, shortmers, which lack a few residues from the desired oligonucleotide therapeutics, are difficult to remove using conventional high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) purification because they have similar structures and physical properties to the desired oligonucleotide. In this study, we developed a simple purification method for oligonucleotide therapeutics. In our strategy, the retention of shortmers on the reversed-phase HPLC column was increased by using a highly lipophilic phosphoramidite, which is a reagent for 5′-end modification of oligonucleotides, instead of acetic anhydride during solid-phase synthesis, and only the target oligonucleotide could be eluted from a reversed-phase HPLC pretreatment column.