Kinetic analysis of the mechanism of plasminogen activation by streptokinase

A kinetic study is made of plasminogen activation to plasmin catalyzed by streptokinase. The goal of the present paper is the resolution of the mechanism corresponding to the activation process by a global way, considering the mechanism as a whole and under less restrictive assumptions that those used by other authors. The kinetic equations describing the evolution with time of species involved in the system have been obtained. These equations are valid for both the transient phase and the steady state of the reaction. A kinetic data analysis procedure to evaluate the kinetic parameters, based on the derived kinetic equations has been suggested, for the first time, in the present paper. The validity of the results obtained has been checked by using simulated progress curves of the species involved. Finally, we have demonstrated that the time course equations obtained can be applied directly to different mechanisms of zymogen activation that could be considered to be particular cases of the general studied mechanism.