Plasmid pVAX1-NH36 purification by membrane and bead perfusion chromatography.

The demand for plasmid DNA (pDNA) has increased in response to the rapid advances in vaccines applications to prevent and treat infectious diseases caused by virus, bacteria or parasites, such as Leishmania species. The immunization protocols require large amounts of supercoiled plasmid DNA (sc-pDNA) challenging the development of efficient and profitable processes for capturing and purified pDNA molecules from large volumes of lysates. A typical bioprocess involves four steps: fermentation, primary recovery, intermediate recovery and final purification. Ion-exchange chromatography is one of the key operations in the purification schemes of pDNA owing the chemical structure of these macromolecules. The goal of this research was to compare the performance of the final purification step of pDNA using ion-exchange chromatography on columns packed with Mustang Q membranes or perfusive beads POROS 50 HQ. The experimental results showed that both matrixes could separate the plasmid pVAX1-NH36 (3936 bp) from impurities in clarified Escherichia coli lysates with an adequate resolution. In addition, a 24- and 21-fold global purification factor was obtained. An 88 and 63% plasmid recuperation was achieved with ion-exchange membranes and perfusion beads, respectively. A better understanding of perfusion-based matrices for the purification of pDNA was developed in this research.

Breakthrough performance of large proteins on ion-exchange membrane columns.

Protein adsorption of large proteins on ion-exchange membrane columns was theoretically and experimentally investigated using batch and fixed-bed systems. Thyroglobulin was used as the model protein. The study strongly suggests that part of the protein is physically retained inside the column during frontal mode operation. These experimental results were used to obtain a filtration function of the chromatographic system. In the theoretical analysis of the frontal protein adsorption, a model was integrated by the serial coupling of the membrane-transport model, the filtration model and the system-dispersion model. Two different techniques were employed in the estimation of the maximum adsorption capacity, the equilibrium desorption constant and the forward interaction rate constant, which are the parameters of the membrane-transport model. The fit of the model to the experimental data was not possible using the equilibrium parameters obtained in the batch experiments. The parameter estimation using a simplex optimization routine coupled to the solution of the partial differential model equations yields full prediction of the adsorption phenomena.