New Purification Technology: Cobetter Purcise™ Q Membrane

With the increasing demand for gene therapy, vaccine products, and anti-tumor products, competition in the biopharmaceutical industry has become increasingly fierce, and the pressure to reduce process costs has also increased. Based on our unique advantages in membrane production, Cobetter has developed membrane chromatography products that can improve process efficiency and reduce R&D costs for downstream processes.

Advantages of Cobetter Q Membrane Chromatography

1. High Flow Rate

The internal structure of membrane chromatography is different from the traditional chromatography resins. Firstly, traditional chromatography resins are porous spherical particles. Even if the outer water channel has an increased pore size compared to the internal pore size, they are limited by the physical rigidity and diffusion mass transfer of the resins, which makes it impossible to achieve a high flow rate. The process flow rate of traditional chromatography resin  is generally around 0.3CV/min. The internal flow channel of membrane chromatography is a rigid honeycomb shaped pore with a diameter of about 0.7μm. The pore is wide and has a low back pressure, providing a guarantee for high flow rate processes, which is around 10MV/min, and the maximum can reach 25MV/min.

2. High Efficiency

1). High binding efficiency: Due to the porous spherical structure of the chromatography resins, the average pore size inside is about 15-40 nanometers, and about 80% of the ligands are located on the surface of the internal pores. So when using traditional chromatography columns for target molecules, it is based on the principle of diffusion mass transfer. The target molecules need a long time of diffusion to bind with the internal pore ligands, and the binding efficiency is relatively low, which depends on the retention time (i.e. the interaction time between the target molecule and the packing). To achieve the desired binding capacity, the retention time of packed chromatography is generally controlled at 3 minutes or more (i.e., the time for the target molecule to flow through the chromatography column is 3 minutes or more). 

On the other hand, membrane chromatography is based on the principle of convective mass transfer when using target molecules. The target molecules flow through rigid network pores and are easily bound to the ligands on the pore surface, with a much higher binding efficiency than chromatography columns. For Cobetter membrane chromatography, retention time is no longer a critical process parameter. Generally, the retention time of membrane chromatography is 12 seconds or even lower, and changes in retention time will hardly affect the binding capacity of membrane chromatography. At the same time, membrane chromatography is based on ligands exposed on the pore surface, which exhibits a much higher binding capacity than packing chromatography when capturing larger biomolecules such as plasmid DNA, viruses, HCP, etc.

2). High process efficiency: Membrane chromatography is based on the principle of convective mass transfer, which does not affect its capture performance under high flow rate conditions. Compared with chromatography columns, membrane chromatography can process samples of the same size and volume in a shorter time. Shorten process time and improve process efficiency.

3. Easy to Use

Traditional chromatography requires pre-packing operation before use. After loading, it requires column efficiency measurement, cleaning, and preservation. Not only does it consume a lot of manpower and resources, but it also incurs a significant amount of time and cost. Compared with traditional chromatography columns, membrane chromatography no longer requires packing and can be disassembled and used immediately, requiring only a small amount of balanced buffer treatment before use. Greatly saving usage costs and process time.

4. Reduce Process Costs

Reduce buffer usage: Membrane chromatography is based on the extremely small dead volume inside, ensuring that only a small amount of buffer is needed for membrane balancing, flushing, elution, regeneration, and CIP operations during the process. Greatly reducing the usage of Buffer, lowering the cost while saving water resources and reducing wastewater discharge, making the production process more environmentally friendly.

Reduce hardware investment: Compared to chromatography columns, which requires supporting hardware for column installation, membrane chromatography can be integrated into the chromatography system without hardware support.

Reusable: Service life of 60 cycles of repeated use. BSA was used for capture, elution, and repeated use evaluation. Each cycle was treated with 1M NaOH and 1M NaCl, and there was no significant decrease in BSA loading on the membrane. At the same time, the membrane pressure performance was within an acceptable range.