Tucked inside an electrically charged "salt cloud," tiny proteins can avoid slipping through molecular filters, which may make it easier to purify and separate them from other proteins, engineers with Millipore Corp., Genentech and the University of Delaware reported today.
Someday, proteins for "magic bullet" type medicines, more nutritious foods and new industrial enzymes might be made at lower cost, by using a molecular filter that exploits the salt-cloud concept, says Prof. Andrew L. Zydney of UD's Department of Chemical Engineering.
The new technology, now in development, was disclosed Oct. 12 at the International BioTherapeutics '99 conference in Washington, D.C.
"In the laboratory, the results have been promising," says Robert van Reis, a distinguished engineer with Genentech's Department of Recovery Sciences in South San Francisco.
"This is the first time that anyone has been able to use a membrane-based system to carry out highly selective separations, while also maintaining a high-volume throughput," van Reis says. "Biotechnology is heading toward much larger batch sizes. This increases the desire to find economical ways to purify proteins. One way to achieve this is to concentrate, buffer exchange and purify proteins in a single step, and that's exactly what this new membrane technology may be able to do."
If it pans out, the joint research could even be useful for purifying drugs based on antibodies produced using recombinant DNA methods, says Ralf Kuriyel, research and development manager at Millipore in Bedford, Mass.
In addition to removing protein impurities, the system could also simplify the process of removing contaminants and other impurities such as DNA and viruses, Kuriyel says.
And, Zydney has described the system's potential effectiveness for separating
whey proteins from milk, and for recovering recombinant proteins. Whey proteins
could be used in new foods and medicines, ranging from improved infant for
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Contact: Laura Overturf
overturf@udel.edu
302-831-1418
University of Delaware
12-Oct-1999