Excessive
ammonium blood concentration causes many serious neurological complications. The medications currently used are not very effective. To remove
ammonium from the blood, erythrocyte-
bioreactors containing
enzymes that processing
ammonium have been proposed. The most promising
bioreactor contained co-encapsulated
glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) and
alanine aminotransferase (ALT). However, a low encapsulation of a commonly used bovine liver GDH (due to high aggregation), makes clinical use of such
bioreactors impossible. In this study, new
bioreactors containing ALT and non-aggregating GDH at higher loading were first produced using the flow dialysis method and the new bacterial
GDH enzyme from Proteus sp. The efficacy of these erythrocyte-
bioreactors and their properties (
hemolysis, osmotic fragility, intracellular and extracellular activity of included
enzymes, erythrocyte indices, and filterability) were studied and compared with native cells during 1-week storage. The
ammonium removal rate in vitro by such erythrocyte-
bioreactors increased linearly with an increase in encapsulated GDH activity.
Alanine in vitro increased in accordance with
ammonium consumption, which indicated the joint functioning of both included
enzymes. Thus, novel
bioreactors for
ammonium removal containing GDH from Proteus sp. are promising for clinical use, since they have a more efficient GDH encapsulation and their properties are not inferior to previously obtained erythrocyte-
bioreactors.