Computer-aided process design of affinity membrane adsorbers: a case study on antibodies capturing

摘要

Design of affinity membrane adsorbers for the purification of biomolecules requires a consideration of loading, washing, and elution. Modelling and simulation of membrane adsorbers in literature is, however, strongly focused on the loading step. Therefore, in this work, a complete process model which takes all the different steps into account was developed. Breakthrough experiments in which human IgG was captured onto and eluted from Sartobind Protein A downscale modules were used for model validation and for estimation of the required model parameters. The experimentally observed breakthrough curves were independent of the applied flow rate and from these results linear correlations between lumped kinetic parameters and linear velocity were determined. During elution, desorption was best described by an irreversible reaction of first order in H+ concentration. Applicability of the developed model to computer-aided design was illustrated through a process analysis study in which the influence of the amount of loaded protein per cycle on the process yield and productivity was investigated. (C) 2008 Institute of Chemistry, Slovak Academy of Sciences.