Downstream Development

Foundation Elements for Cell Therapy Smart Scaling

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Cell therapy is the injection of cellular material into patients. The injected cell-therapy product (CTP) usually consists of intact living cells. In recent years, cell therapies have evolved and matured, moving from academia to industry. That maturation is reflected in the number of open clinical trials that include the term cell therapy in their descriptions: To date, there are more than 8,700 open trials listed on the US National Institutes of Health’s online database (clinicaltrials.gov), most of which are in…

April 14, 2015

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Manufacturing Biotherapeutics

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Optimizing antibody manufacturing processes has gone beyond the first-order goal of achieving elevated protein titers and now also focuses on understanding biologic and manufacturing process variables that define cellular machinery and protein quality. A holistic approach to biotherapeutic manufacturing incorporates several applied disciplines such as biology, engineering, process control, signal processing, and modeling to reduce the “black-box†model of cell- based protein production into an operational design space. This is in line with the US Food and Drug Administration’s quality…

March 10, 2015

Affinity Capture of F(ab’)2 Fragments: Using Twin-Column Countercurrent Chromatography

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Antibody fragments are potent active drug substances (1–4). Because they lack glycosylation, they can be produced using different biological expression systems, including yeast and microbial systems as well as mammalian cells. These molecules are interesting as biopharmaceuticals because they are smaller than full-size antibodies and therefore may penetrate better into different tissues. Antibody fragments are cleared faster in biological systems because they lack the Fc antibody structural region (4). However, fragments may be conjugated to increase their size for improved…

February 6, 2015

Protein A Intermediate Wash Strategies

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Protein A affinity chromatography offers efficient monoclonal antibody (MAb) purification and is used extensively in large-scale MAb production. As is the case with most chromatography media, protein A resins often have some degree of nonspecific binding, which causes host-cell proteins (HCPs) to coelute with a MAb. To reduce nonspecific binding interactions, an intermediate wash step can be performed before product elution. Doing so can improve product purity, extend column lifetime, and potentially eliminate a subsequent polishing step. For large- scale…

February 6, 2015

Advances in Chromatography Automation

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Not long ago, chromatography automation meant strip recorders and peristaltic pumps. Today, few people would consider that to be true automation, and even fewer would settle for binders full of strip-recorder paper reels. Automation is becoming intelligent and in the process is making our workflows smarter. But how close is automation to being as smart as an experienced scientist? Bio-Rad Laboratories spoke with academics, biotechnology R&D scientists, and industrial process engineers about the evolution of chromatography automation — where it…

January 13, 2015

Evaluating Freeze–Thaw Processes in Biopharmaceutical Development – Small-Scale Study Designs

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Regulations mandate that biopharmaceutical product quality be controlled throughout manufacturing, storage, transportation, and delivery to patients (1). Operations often include freezing and thawing of a bulk drug substance, dilution of that purified substance to a target concentration, filtration, filling into a selected container–closure system, additional processing (e.g., lyophilization), inspection, packaging, storage, transport, and delivery (2). Freezing is a common processing step used to maintain stability and quality of a drug substance during development and production of biopharmaceutical products. It is…

January 13, 2015

Accelerated Product Development: Leveraging Industry and Regulator Knowledge to Bring Products to Patients Quickly

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A Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) Strategy Forum titled “Accelerated Product Development: Leveraging Combined Industry and Regulator Knowledge to Bring Products to Patients More Quickly†was held in Washington, DC, on 27 January 2014. Biological therapeutics in development are demonstrating remarkable results in the clinic for many indications. So companies are seeking ways to accelerate the approval of these therapies and rapidly bring them to market. Many such products take the form of well-characterized proteins (e.g., IgG1 or IgG2 monoclonal…

December 11, 2014

Upstream Efficiencies, Economic Forces, and Changing Technologies Complicate Separation and Purification

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When it comes to biotherapeutics manufacturing, downstream processing groups tend to get “dumped on.†Advances in cell lines, bioreactors, and culture media formulations have increased production output, providing both higher expression titers and greater volumes, but the filters and chromatography columns on the downstream side haven’t kept pace. These century-old technologies haven’t evolved as much and are reaching their limits. Regulatory agencies have contributed to innovation stagnation because they are cautious about manufacturing process changes for fear of undermining quality…

October 16, 2014

Evolving Clarification Strategies to Meet New Challenges

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Increasingly efficient bioreactors allow biopharmaceutical manufacturers to achieve higher cell densities. That improved upstream efficiency has led to new purification challenges resulting from high product and contaminant concentrations as well as complex components. Therefore, harvest and clarification techniques are evolving to incorporate feed pretreatment, flocculation, and different filtration technologies such as normal-flow, tangential-flow, and depth filtration. The objective is to increase process capacities and filtrate quality, ultimately reducing biomanufacturing costs. New strategies for clarification of recombinant proteins (in particular, monoclonal…

October 16, 2014

Cost Estimation for Protein A Chromatography: An In Silico Approach to MAb Purification Strategy

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Monoclonal antibody (MAb) production has adopted an accepted technology platform for downstream processing (1). The need for more economic processes has been addressed by increasing MAb titers in fermentation and aiming toward greater bioreactor volumes to increase productivity. Consequently, cost pressures are now passed on to downstream process groups. Membrane and chromatography resin savings are more important for MAb processes than ever before, with highly productive cell cultures generating large volumes of process fluid to purify (2). Traditionally, protein A…

October 16, 2014