MilliporeSigma arrived at Biotech Week Boston ready to outline why its newly developed Eshmuno CP-FT resin marks an improvement over competitor products.
With this in mind, the company released statistics suggesting that the ‘flow-through’ frontal chromatography technology can enable loading capacities 10 times higher than traditional methods.
We spoke to Mike Felo, director of downstream process integration at MilliporeSigma, at the event to discover how the technology came about and what he believes it will bring to downstream processing. Felo said that the new technology is part of an industry move towards ‘process intensification’.
He explained, “Process intensification is a buzzword that means taking a look at the manufacturing process and trying to figure out how to make it smaller, modular, with lower labour requirements and higher automation. This feeds into the overall aim of running continuously, where we can produce the monoclonal antibody and then purify it in one, continuous process.”
In terms of how the new resin marks a departure from standard technology, he said: “Traditionally, what we’ve tried to do at the final stage of polishing is to bind the antibody to a resin column and then wash off the impurities. What we’ve tried to do with Eshmuno CP-FT resin is to bind the impurities individually; so, if you’re only binding impurities at a 3% level then we only have to design a resin that captures this fraction rather than 100% and then remove the impurities along the way.”
Felo noted this is how the technology is able to achieve the improved loading capacities, which he told us had also been observed practically through the creation of partner consortiums with Sandoz and Lek to test the technology.
In addition, he told us that one of the significant advantages is the improved efficiency of the process: “We’re seeing a 10% overall improvement in efficiency – in costs for the overall process, it also reduces labour, and buffer use by up to 50%.”