Protein therapeutics are quickly becoming some of the most promising medicines available to healthcare professionals. In order to develop these therapeutics, protein purification is an essential step in the manufacturing process. The purification step is costly, dumping tremendous resources into development budgets and timelines.
Researchers have had difficulty in the past to directly measure the movement of proteins, known as protein diffusion, in materials. There is also a lack of consensus on how movement at the surface of the material contributes to protein movement when utilizing ion-exchange chromatography.
Engineers from the University of Delaware and Amgen, have shown that surface diffusion in protein transport into ion-exchange beads depends on adsorption affinity, a measure of attraction between the two materials. The researchers have developed a procedure to purify a monoclonal antibody with a productivity of 43% higher than usual. Their results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We present a very strong case for the significance of surface diffusion, and we use multiple approaches to corroborate its importance through a simple technique that can be implemented right away," said Ohnmar Khanal, a doctoral student in chemical engineering.