High-Throughput Process Development: II. Membrane Chromatography

Abstract

Membrane chromatography is gradually emerging as an alternative to conventional column chromatography. It alleviates some of the major disadvantages associated with the latter including high pressure drop across the column bed and dependence on intra-particle diffusion for the transport of solute molecules to their binding sites within the pores of separation media. In the last decade, it has emerged as a method of choice for final polishing of biopharmaceuticals, in particular monoclonal antibody products. The relevance of such a platform is high in view of the constraints with respect to time and resources that the biopharma industry faces today. This protocol describes the steps involved in performing HTPD of a membrane chromatography step. It describes operation of a commercially available device (AcroPrep™ Advance filter plate with Mustang S membrane from Pall Corporation). This device is available in 96-well format with 7 μL membrane in each well. We discuss the challenges that one faces when performing such experiments as well as possible solutions to alleviate them. Besides describing the operation of the device, the protocol also presents an approach for statistical analysis of the data that is gathered from such a platform. A case study involving use of the protocol for examining ion exchange chromatography of Granulocyte Colony Stimulating Factor (GCSF), a therapeutic product, is briefly discussed. This is intended to demonstrate the usefulness of this protocol in generating data that is representative of the data obtained at the traditional lab scale. The agreement in the data is indeed very significant (regression coefficient 0.99). We think that this protocol will be of significant value to those involved in performing high-throughput process development of membrane chromatography.

Current advances in the development of high-throughput purification strategies for the generation of therapeutic antibodies

“…The studies produced a good understanding of the design space and agreed with studies run at larger scale [49]. The results from GCSF purification are likely to be translated to HTP of antibodies and optimization of membrane chromatography methods [24].…”

“…These three techniques represent the bulk of the current literature on HT antibody purification, but other methods such as membrane chromatography [24] and magnetic beads [25] are beginning to make an impact.…”

High-Throughput Automation in Chemical Process Development

“…In addition, HT techniques combined with thermodynamic modeling have been shown to be useful for predicting protein adsorption, providing a foundation for chromatographic process design (98). The emergence of membrane chromatography for isolation of biopharmaceuticals and therapeutic proteins as an alternative to conventional column chromatography has spawned the development of another area of HT process development (99). Scalability of miniaturized HT platforms has been demonstrated in various systems for isolating therapeutic proteins, offering a means to efficiently develop and optimize membrane chromatography operations (96,(100)(101)(102).…”