Different types of aqueous two‐phase systems for biomolecule and bioparticle extraction and purification

Abstract

Upstream improvements have led to significant advances in the productivity of biomolecules and bioparticles. Today, downstream processes are the bottleneck in the production of some biopharmaceuticals, a change from previous years. Current purification platforms will reach their physical limits at some point, indicating the need for new approaches. This article reviews an alternative method to extract and purify biomolecules/bioparticles named aqueous two-phase system (ATPS). Biocompatibility and readiness to scale up are some of the ATPS characteristics. We also discuss some of ATPS applications in the biotechnology field.

Aqueous two-phase system (ATPS): an overview and advances in its applications

“…Other types include, ionic liquids and short-chain alcohols [1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11]. In addition to this, ionic and/or non-ionic surfactants are used for the formation of micellar and reverse micellar ATPSs [6, 12, 13].…”

Design of novel aqueous micellar two-phase systems using ionic liquids as co-surfactants for the selective extraction of (bio)molecules

“…Traditionally, LLE was mostly accomplished by applying environmentally nefarious and expensive organic solvents (3). In this context, aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) emerged as appellative types of LLE, since they are mainly composed of water and do not require the use of organic solvents in the whole process, providing mild operation conditions (4,5). These systems consist of two aqueous-rich phases of two structurally different compounds that are immiscible above stated values of concentration, undergoing phase separation.…”

“…At the end, ATPS give rise to highly flexible approaches, since a considerable array of compounds, e.g. polymers, salts or surfactants, can be combined in order to strategically design them to achieve high extraction and purification effectiveness, selectivities and yields (4).…”

Liquid–liquid extraction of biopharmaceuticals from fermented broth: trends and future prospects

“…The use of ABS for the recovery of proteins is already well‐established in literature, not only allowing good results for extraction and purification, but some formulations have even the ability to stabilize certain proteins . So, ABS are already successfully applied in the extraction and purification of biomolecules from many sources, including animal and hybridoma cells, plants, human and animal tissues and fluids, insect cells and fermented broth of microorganisms , , . Considering that the major part of biopharmaceuticals are proteins, the use of ABS is a very promising technique to recover them, but it should be aware that some of the phase forming components (at specific compositions) can induce a denaturant effect over proteins.…”