Polishing of monoclonal antibodies streams through convective flow devices

Monoclonal Antibodies Production Platforms: An Opportunity Study of a Non-Protein-A Chromatographic Platform Based on Process Economics

Monoclonal antibodies currently dominate the biopharmaceutical market with growing sales having reached 80 billion USD in 2016. As most top-selling mAbs are approaching the end of their patent life, biopharmaceutical companies compete fiercely in the biosimilars market. These two factors present a strong motivation for alternative process strategies and process optimization. In this work a novel purification strategy for monoclonal antibodies comprising phenylboronic acid multimodal chromatography for capture followed by polishing by ion-exchange monolithic chromatography and packed bed hydrophobic interaction chromatography is presented and compared to the traditional protein-A-based process. Although the capital investment is similar for both processes, the operation cost is 20% lower for the novel strategy. This study shows that the new process is worthwhile investing in and could present a viable alternative to the platform process used by most industrial players.

Role of Buffers in Protein Formulations

Buffers comprise an integral component of protein formulations. Not only do they function to regulate shifts in pH, they also can stabilize proteins by a variety of mechanisms. The ability of buffers to stabilize therapeutic proteins whether in liquid formulations, frozen solutions, or the solid state is highlighted in this review. Addition of buffers can result in increased conformational stability of proteins, whether by ligand binding or by an excluded solute mechanism. In addition, they can alter the colloidal stability of proteins and modulate interfacial damage. Buffers can also lead to destabilization of proteins, and the stability of buffers themselves is presented. Furthermore, the potential safety and toxicity issues of buffers are discussed, with a special emphasis on the influence of buffers on the perceived pain upon injection. Finally, the interaction of buffers with other excipients is examined.

Directing membrane chromatography to manufacture α1-antitrypsin from human plasma fraction IV

The surging demand for plasma proteins, mainly driven by the growing market and the development of new therapeutic indications, is promoting manufacturers to improve the throughput of plasma proteins. Due to the inherent convective mass transfer, membrane chromatography has been proved to be an efficient approach for extracting a small amount of target proteins from large-volume feed. In this study, α1-antitrypsin (AAT) was extracted from human plasma fraction IV by a two-step membrane chromatography. An anion-exchange membrane chromatography (AEMC) was used to capture the plasma proteins in bind/elute mode, and the obtained effluent was further polished by a hydrophobic interaction membrane chromatography (HIMC) in flow-through mode. Under optimal conditions, the recovery and purity of AAT achieved 87.0% and 0.58 AAT/protein (g/g) by AEMC, respectively. After the precise polishing by HIMC, the purity of AAT was 1.22 AAT/protein (g/g). The comparison results showed that membrane chromatography outperformed column chromatography in both steps because of its high throughput. This two-step membrane chromatography could obtain an AAT recovery of 83.3% and an activity recovery of 91.4%. The outcome of this work not only offers an alternative process for protein purification from plasma, but also provides guidelines for manufacturing product from a large-volume feed with multi-components by membrane chromatography.