Antibody Purification - Is it easy at small scales?
Why are antibodies purified?
Antibodies are purified in many different applications.
• In antibody sequencing, a small quantity of antibodies with decent purity are needed for subsequent processes. Many antibody sequencing companies also need to provide clients at least milligrams of purified antibody along with sequencing reports.
• In antibody discovery, engineering, and characterization businesses, high purity antibodies are needed to minimize background interference.
• In cell line development, supernatants are usually purified to understand the levels and types of impurities, such as HCP profile, and other properties of the antibodies.
• It is obvious that antibodies are purified in preclinical, clinical and commercial manufacturing applications, but these are at much larger scales.
• And many others….
Make Antibody Purification Simple & Fast
Challenges for small scale antibody purification
Antibody purification is measured by a matrix of performance indicators. These indicators include yield, purity, purified concentration, and time. Overall, antibody purification for clinical applications is optimized through process development. However, antibody purification at small scales does not have such luxury, especially as the requirement of throughput is growing dramatically.
Small scale antibody purification has unique challenges compared to larger scale purification.
1) Antibodies targeted in small scale purification are usually at very early stage development. They are usually at low titers and may have stability issues;
2) Although there are only micrograms to milligrams of antibodies produced, a large number of small batches are needed to be purified, which makes the timeline tight;
3) Larger scale purification tools such as conventional chromatography columns cannot be used directly for small scale purification, because they are not usually in high-throughput formats.
4) Magnetic beads and resin beads have been used widely for antibody purification. The two types of products need an hour to two-hour long incubation. Additionally, the resulting purity level is often not satisfying.
Is high-throughput antibody purification easy?
High-throughput antibody purification can be straightforward and productive, if the tools you selected are aligned with your goals. Magnetic beads can get things done, however, often times, unexpected events occur, such as aggregation of magnetic beads. If you aim to obtain high yield and high purity, it might require more time and effort on process development for bead products. If you have a tight timeline and expect to get purification done quickly, you may need an alternative purification tool.
We offer rapid and high-throughput antibody purification products.
Purilogics developed affinity membrane technology for rapid antibody purification. Based on the technology, our team developed Purexa™-PrA HT – 96 well Protein A membrane plate for rapid, high-throughput antibody purification of 50-300 ug antibody captured per well with high yield. We also have Purexa™-PrA mini and Purexa™-PrA 0.2 mL columns for 0.5-2 mg and 5-10 mg antibody purification within minutes. Please check the specific information on the product pages or contact us.