Posters

Convective Interaction Technology (CIM®) offers a number of benefits for the purification of large molecules in comparison with conventional chromatography. The innovative matrix, cast as a single homogeneous piece, means that monolithic columns have a high pressure tolerance and allow fast operating flow rates.

Because the matrix structure is composed of large pores, mass transfer is essentially convective in contrast to conventional chromatography beads, where mass transfer is essentially diffusive. Therefore, CIM can be used at high flow rates without compromising binding capacity.

For these reasons, a monolithic column with anion exchange properties (CIM® QA) was selected to purify a very large protein (8 Mega Dalton) extracted from a marine mollusc.

Because 150 g of protein was required to perform preclinical trials, a scale-up of the process had to be designed and implemented. Early stage process development was carried out on an 8 mL column to determine the column loading capacity as well as the yield and the process reproducibility.

To improve binding on the column, stabilising agents had to be removed prior to this purification step. The protein had been observed to precipitate within hours of the removal of these reagents. Therefore, a suitable time frame for protein processing had to accommodate this instability.

Isolation and purification of proteins, peptides and polynucleotides as well as fractionation of biological mixtures are of great importance both for the solution of theoretical problems in chemistry and biology and the
realization of practical plans connected, in particular, with the production of medicines on the basis of large biomolecules. An important problem in the production of biological substances for medicine is to work out the step of their isolation and fine purification, e.g. creation of high performance separation methods, particularly, the chromatographic techniques. Here, fast and efficient affinity separations based on dynamical interaction of biocomplements play very important role.

High Performance Membrane (Monolith) Chromatography (HPMC) allows to solve all problems of High Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) demonstrating a number of number of distinct advantages. A small thickness of separation layer and opened structure of throughput channels where the separation takes place cause minimum difussion resistance for normal mass transport of the substances as well as low working back pressure and thus, the possibility of use of high elution flow rates.

In order to enable the detection of low abundance proteins from human plasma, it is necessary to remove high abundance proteins. Among them, human serum albumin and immonoglobulin G represent more than 75 % of all abundance proteins. There are many strategies developed for an efficient removal of these two main proteins, the majority of them rely on highly selective, yet expensive affinity techniques. In this work an affinity monolithic column was used for the depletion of IgG. For the removal of HSA we tested an alternative - complementary approach, where an ion-exchange mode was used as one of the depletion steps. the results were compared to the ones obtained by by using the prseudoaffinity columns.

White rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium produces under nitrogen limitation extracellular lignin peroxidases (LiP). They are able to partially depolymerize lignin and to oxidise several xenobiotics (DDT, PCB, PAH,…) and synthetic dyes. Trough HPLC separation and isoelectric focusing multiple molecular forms of LiP have been determined and isolated from the culture filtrate. Depending on growth conditions, separation technique, strain employed and culture age 2-15 different LiP izoenzymes were observed in culture media of Phanerochaete chrysosporium. They are structurally similar but differ in stability, quantity and in catalytic properties. For the isolation of LiP from growth medium, mostly the procedure employing HPLC ionexchange columns as shown on Scheme 1 is used. For the separation of LiP isoenzymes from the culture filtrate, we used CIM (Convective Interaction Media) units. Their advantage is very fast separation of macromolecules due to their particular threedimensional structure. In contrast to particle supports containing closed pores, CIM units consist of monolith porous material containing flow through pores. Therefore, macromolecules to be separated are transported to the active site by convection rather than by diffusion. As a consequence, the separation resolution and dynamic binding capacity are flow independent. As such CIM units can be advantageous also for lignin peroxidase isoenzymes separation and purification.