Year of Publication

ATF Perfusion-based Production Platforms for Biopharmaceuticals at Good Grip – Concept s for Robust Control and Operation

Continuous Perfusion is comparatively unpopular rather than considered as a first choice production platform for complex biopharmaceutical glycoproteins. Major concerns that have been addressed are mainly related to risk of process failure during long-term operation, complexity and scalability of cell retention devices, supply and definition of consecutive lots and, finally, handling of continuous harvests in downstream processing. We have cleared-up these stereotypes and designed a robust modular perfusion-based production platform for biopharmaceuticals demanding highest quality at industrial scale. Main components…

Lipid Removal by Depth Filters in Plasma Fractionation

We herein describe a 3M Purification Inc. depth filter media – Zeta PlusTM DELI that exhibits selective adsorptive properties for plasma lipids. Lipids plug chromatographic columns and filters during plasma fractionation steps and cause solution instability for the final product. Several parameters which could affect the lipid removal efficiency on Zeta Plus DELI have been investigated: prefiltration, contact time, ionic strength, pH, and temperature. The maximum percentage of total lipids eliminated, in optimal operating conditions, was 68%. This method has…

Protein A Cellulose, a new mAb purification platform

Protein A chromatography is widely used as capture step in monoclonal antibody purification processes. Many types of chromatographic media are commercially available for this application however mainly Agarose and Porous glass based products are considered as standard mAb purification platforms due to high dBC and high operational flow rates. In fact process optimization of Protein A step is mainly aimed to have higher capacity and lower elution volumes in shorter process time. In this context Kaneka has been investigating highly…

Evaluating AMMP Protein A Assays: Comparing Sample Preparation Methods, Ligand Performance & Assay Performance

Regulations governing the production of biopharmaceuticals require high levels of purity for processes utilizing Protein A affinity chromatography. It has been shown that Protein A in the presence of IgG forms a PA/IgG complex that interferes in the traditional immunoassay format for detecting Protein A. In this work we evaluated the AMMP Protein A Assay using two popular sample preparation methods to dissociate the ProteinA/IgG complex. The AMMP assay was also tested with Protein A ligands from multiple sources including…

A Single-Use Bioreactor for Both Cell and Microbial Cultures: A Dream Becomes Reality

Application of single-use equipment is common practice in the biopharmaceutical industrial and academic field. Compared to the traditional glass or stainless steel bioreactors, single-use bioreactors offer clear advantages: a quicker turnaround time; minimal utilities required; greatly reduced risk of cross contamination; more operational flexibility; reduced validation requirements. However, until recently, single-use bioreactors have a restricted application, only to animal cell cultures due to limitations in mixing and mass-transfer. As single-use technology not only has significant benefits for cell culture processes,…

Effect of process condition on the Mycoplasma rentention of cell culture media filtersMethods

A Mycoplasma contamination event can have a major impact on a biopharmaceutical manufacturer. The loss of a cell culture due to a contamination incurs significant costs that can be attributed to both the initial bioreactor set-up and to the subsequent decontamination. Production facility throughput may be affected and in the worst cases the ability of the manufacturer to supply patients with medicines. Mycoplasma are extremely small in size and lack a cell wall giving the cells some flexibility that enables…

Salt-tolerant cation exchanger for direct capture of proteins

Ion-exchange chromatography is widely used for the purification of biotherapeutic proteins. Usually, cation exchangers are applied in the primary capture step of proteins with alkaline pI. Conventional ion-exchange chromatography has the advantage of high-binding capacity, but it requires low salt conditions for protein binding and consequently adjustment of conductivity of clarified culture supernatant. An alternative method to maintain some binding capacity at higher conductivity levels is working at low pH condi¬tions notwithstanding that some proteins are sensitive to acid treatment.…

Engineering Analysis of Mixing in ATMI’s Bioreactors Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

The Integrity® PadReactorâ„¢ and Nucleoâ„¢ systems are a single-use bioreactors specifically designed to fulfill the needs of cell culturists. They are perfectly suited to laboratory environments, process develop¬ment centers, clinical material supply and flexible GMP manufacturing. The bioreactor vessel, which offers comparable functionality to classical stirred tank bioreactors, is a single-use bag integrating an internal paddle mixing and sparger system. This innovative bag design allows a non-invasive connection to the system. The paddle is enclosed in a medical grade ULDPE…

The Effect of Conductivity on Dynamic Binding Capacity on CEX Resins

In an effort to improve the antibody manufacturing platform, newer Cation Exchange Resins were evaluated. Dynamic binding studies were conducted using 2 different monoclonal antibodies at a stable pH and varying conductivities across nine resins to determine the differences in binding capacity. DBC Studies were performed at a pH of 5 and conductivities of 5, 10 and 15 mS/cm for the nine cation exchange resins with breakthrough criteria set at 10%. While most of the resins provided excellent binding capacity…

Albumin: A robust pharmaceutical excipient in the stabilization of protein therapeutics

Optimal formulation of peptide and protein pharmaceuticals into efficacious dosage forms to ensure sufficient stability and provide acceptable shelf life is critical. To achieve a stable pharmaceutical drug product, excipients are often added to the protein drug substance. In this study, we investigate recombinant human albumin (rAlbumin) for its ability to prevent or minimize physical and chemical degradation of two allelic variants of the recombinant malaria vaccine candidate, merozoite surface protein 2 (MSP2), in various test formulations. The studies establish…