About TFA salt

Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) is a strong acid, which is commonly used to cleave synthesized peptides from solid-phase resins and is also used to improve HPLC performance in the peptide purification step. By default, custom peptides are delivered as lyophilized TFA salts, and can contain as much as 10-45% TFA.

TFA in custom peptides can cause inexplicable discrepancies in subsequent assay data. For instance, TFA in nM concentrations has been shown to interfere with cellular assays, inhibiting cellular proliferation in some instances, and increasing cell viability in others . It has also been found to be an unintended allosteric modulator of the glycine receptor, GlyR.

TFA Removal Service is recommended for: