Doping reversed-phase media for improved peptide purification.

The purification of therapeutic peptides is most often performed using one or more reversed phase chromatography steps. This ensures high purities while keeping the costs of purification under control. In this paper, a doped reversed phase chromatographic material is tested and compared to traditional reversed phase materials. The doping consists of adding limited amounts of ion exchange ligands to the surface of the material to achieve orthogonal separation and increase the non-hydrophobic interactions with the surface. These ionic groups can either be attractive (opposite charge), or repulsive (same charge) to the peptide. The benefit of this new doped reversed phase material is shown through increases in selectivity in diluted conditions and yield and productivity in overloaded (i.e. industrial) conditions. It is the conjectured that all performance characteristics should increase using repulsive doping groups, whereas these characteristics should decrease when using attractive doping groups. This conjecture is shown to be true through several examples, including purifications of industrially relevant peptide crudes, in industrially relevant conditions. Moreover, the effect of ionic strength and organic modifier concentration was explored and shown to be in line with the expected behavior.

Model-based design space determination of peptide chromatographic purification processes.

Operating a chemical process at fixed operating conditions often leads to suboptimal process performances. It is important in fact to be able to vary the process operating conditions depending upon possible changes in feed composition, products requirements or economics. This flexibility in the manufacturing process was facilitated by the publication of the PAT initiative from the U.S. FDA [1]. In this work, the implementation of Quality-by-design in the development of a chromatographic purification process is discussed. A procedure to determine the design space of the process using chromatographic modeling is presented. Moreover, the risk of batch failure and the critical process parameters (CPP) are assessed by modeling. The ideal cut strategy is adopted and therefore only yield and productivity are considered as critical quality attributes (CQA). The general trends in CQA variations within the design space are discussed. The effect of process disturbances is also considered. It is shown that process disturbances significantly decrease the design space and that only simultaneous and specific changes in multiple process parameters (i.e. critical process parameters (CPP) lead to batch failure. The reliability of the obtained results is proven by comparing the model predictions to suitable experimental data. The case study presented in this work proves the reliability of process development using a model-based approach.

Model-based design of peptide chromatographic purification processes.

In this work we present a general procedure for the model-based optimization of a polypeptide crude mixture purification process through its application to a case of industrial relevance. This is done to show how much modeling can be beneficial to optimize complex chromatographic processes in the industrial environment. The target peptide elution profile was modeled with a two sites adsorption equilibrium isotherm exhibiting two inflection points. The variation of the isotherm parameters with the modifier concentration was accounted for. The adsorption isotherm parameters of the target peptide were obtained by the inverse method. The elution of the impurities was approximated by lumping them into pseudo-impurities and by regressing their adsorption isotherm parameters directly as a function of the corresponding parameters of the target peptide. After model calibration and validation by comparison with suitable experimental data, Pareto optimizations of the process were carried out so as to select the optimal batch process.

Modeling of mixed-mode chromatography of peptides.

Mixed-mode chromatographic materials are more and more often used for the purification of biomolecules, such as peptides and proteins. In many instances they in fact exhibit better selectivity values and therefore improve the purification efficiency compared to classical materials. In this work, a model to describe biomolecules retention in cation-exchange/reversed-phase (CIEX-RP) mixed-mode columns under diluted conditions has been developed. The model accounts for the effect of the salt and organic modifier concentration on the biomolecule Henry coefficient through three parameters: α, ß and γ. The α parameter is related to the adsorption strength and ligand density, ß represents the number of organic modifier molecules necessary to displace one adsorbed biomolecule and γ represents the number of salt molecules necessary to desorb one biomolecule. The latter parameter is strictly related to the number of charges on the biomolecule surface interacting with the ion-exchange ligands and it is shown experimentally that its value is close to the biomolecule net charge. The model reliability has been validated by a large set of experimental data including retention times of two different peptides (goserelin and insulin) on five columns: a reversed-phase C8 column and four CIEX-RP columns with different percentages of sulfonic groups and various concentration values of the salt and organic modifier. It has been found that the percentage of sulfonic groups on the surface strongly affects the peptides adsorption strength, and in particular, in the cases investigated, a CIEX ligand density around 0.04µmol/m(2) leads to optimal retention values.

Modeling of ion-pairing effect in peptide reversed-phase chromatography.

The modeling of counterion and organic modifier concentration effects in peptide APIs reversed-phase preparative chromatography is discussed in this manuscript. A stoichiometric retention model based on the counterion binding to the charged functional groups of the peptide is proposed. The model parameters were evaluated using a rather large set of retention data measured in mobile phases with various counterions and acetonitrile concentrations. The model parameters were experimentally validated by a new counterion binding measurement technique. The n(max) model parameter value was found to be equal to the peptide net charge, whereas the K model parameter value was found to be specific to the counterion type (i.e. AcO(-)

Influence of the pore size of reversed phase materials on peptide purification processes.

The influence of the pore size of a chromatographic reversed phase material on the adsorption equilibria and diffusion of two industrially relevant peptides (i.e. a small synthetic peptide and insulin) has been studied using seven different reversed phase HPLC materials having pore sizes ranging from 90 Å to 300 Å. The stationary phase pore size distribution was obtained by inverse size exclusion measurement (iSEC). The effect of the pore size on the mass transfer properties of the materials was evaluated from Van Deemter experiments. It has been shown that the lumped mass transfer coefficient increases linearly with the average pore size. The Henry coefficient and the impurity selectivity were determined in diluted conditions. The saturation capacity of the main peptides was determined in overloaded conditions using the inverse method (i.e. peak fitting). It was shown that the adsorption equilibria of the peptides on the seven materials is well described by a surface-specific adsorption isotherm. Based on this a lumped kinetic model has been developed to model the elution profile of the two peptides in overloaded conditions and to simulate the purification of the peptide from its crude mixture. It has been found that the separation of insulin from its main impurity (i.e. desamido-insulin) was not affected by the pore size. On the other hand, in the case of the synthetic peptide, it was found that the adsorption of the most significant impurity decreases with the pore size. This decrease is probably due to an increase in silanol activity with decreasing pore size.

Effect of high pH column regeneration on the separation performances in reversed phase chromatography of peptides.

Caustic regeneration procedures are often used in chromatographic purification processes of peptides and proteins to remove irreversibly bound impurities from the stationary phase. Silica-based materials are the most commonly used materials in reversed phase chromatography of peptides. Their limited chemical stability at high pH can be, however, problematic when high pH column regeneration (i.e. cleaning in place) is required. The effect of cleaning in place on the surface chemistry of the stationary phase has been investigated using the Tanaka test. It has been shown that the high pH treatment does not significantly affect the hydrophobicity of the material, but it strongly increases its silanol activity. A representative peptide purification process has been used to investigate the impact of cleaning in place on the separation performance. It has been shown that the caustic regeneration increases the peptide retention at high pH (pH 6.5), due to the interactions between the peptide and the negatively charged silanol groups. These unwanted interactions reduce the separation performances by decreasing the selectivity between the late eluting impurities and the main peptide. However, it has been shown that the effect of the silanol groups on the peptide adsorption and on the separation performance can be minimized by carrying out the purification process at low pH (pH approximately 2). In this case, the silanol groups are protonated and their electrostatic interactions with the positively charged analyte (i.e. peptides) are suppressed. In these conditions, the peptide adsorption and the impurity selectivity is not changing upon high pH column regeneration and the separation performance is not affected.

Peptide pore accessibility in reversed-phase chromatography.

The effect of salt or peptide concentration on peptide porosity (i.e. the porosity accessible to a given peptide) is investigated on six different reversed-phase stationary phases. The peptide porosity is found to increase with the local concentration of negative charges following a saturation-type function within the same porosity boundaries for both cases. This can induce the formation of anti-Langmuirian peaks in non-adsorbing conditions since the local increase of the ionic strength due to the peptide concentration increases the porosity accessible to the peptide. This behavior can be well reproduced by the ideal model of chromatography assuming non-constant porosity. The acetonitrile adsorption isotherm was also measured on all the considered reversed-phase stationary phases. A comparison between the stationary phases shows a correlation between the amount of acetonitrile accumulated in the pores and the reduced pore accessibility for the peptide.