SBIR Phase II: Asymmetric Block Copolymer Membranes for Ultrafiltration

SBIR 第二阶段：用于超滤的不对称嵌段共聚物膜

• 批准号: 1430723
• 负责人: Rachel Dorin
• 金额: $ 74.99万
• 依托单位: TeraPore Technologies, Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2018-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1430723&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Asymmetric; Block

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project addresses the high costs of manufacturing protein therapeutics, or biologics. Biologics are a growing category of therapeutic that can treat a range of diseases from rheumatoid arthritis to ulcerative colitis to Alzheimer's. Unfortunately, producing these highly effective therapeutics is extremely expensive, with most of the cost stemming from the purification of the target protein from a complex mixture. This Phase II project aims to develop a new filter device that makes purifying biologics faster and cheaper. The filter media will increase overall throughput, thereby easing bottleneck steps in the purification process. In addition to decreased manufacturing costs, the expedited purification also increases the overall capacity of the manufacturing line. This high throughput filter device is designed to fit seamlessly into existing purification modules, making it easy for end users to increase production efficiencies.This SBIR Phase II project aims to dramatically improve the performance of ultrafiltration membranes used in protein separations. Currently existing ultrafiltration membranes suffer from either prohibitively low throughputs or broad pore sizes, limiting their efficacy in separation processes. This project takes advantage of a unique class of polymeric materials, known as block copolymers, to make membranes that overcome the previous structural limitations. Namely, the block copolymer membranes have very high throughputs and very uniform pore sizes. These important features are possible due to the distinct ability of block copolymers to self-assembly into periodic, ordered structures with length scales relevant for protein separations. Using a combination of block copolymer self-assembly and non-solvent induced phase separation, membranes with targeted pore sizes can be made in scalable way. The research objectives for this project are to increase the porosity of the supporting block copolymer material, attach the block copolymer membrane to a fabric backing, evaluate the performance of assembled membrane sheet stock, and package the sheet stock into a device configuration. Accomplishing these research objectives will result in a mechanically robust, easy to implement membrane material that can increase the rate of protein filtration by 3-10 fold.

该小企业创新研究 (SBIR) 第二阶段项目具有更广泛的影响/商业潜力，解决了制造蛋白质疗法或生物制剂的高成本问题。生物制剂是一个不断增长的治疗类别，可以治疗从类风湿性关节炎到溃疡性结肠炎再到阿尔茨海默氏症的一系列疾病。不幸的是，生产这些高效的治疗药物非常昂贵，其中大部分成本来自从复杂混合物中纯化目标蛋白。该二期项目旨在开发一种新型过滤装置，使生物制剂的纯化速度更快、成本更低。过滤介质将提高总体吞吐量，从而缓解净化过程中的瓶颈步骤。除了降低制造成本外，加速纯化还提高了生产线的整体产能。这种高通量过滤装置旨在无缝地融入现有的纯化模块，使最终用户能够轻松提高生产效率。该 SBIR 二期项目旨在显着提高用于蛋白质分离的超滤膜的性能。目前现有的超滤膜要么吞吐量过低，要么孔径过大，限制了它们在分离过程中的功效。该项目利用一类独特的聚合物材料（称为嵌段共聚物）来制造克服先前结构限制的膜。即，嵌段共聚物膜具有非常高的通量和非常均匀的孔径。这些重要特征之所以成为可能，是因为嵌段共聚物具有自组装成周期性有序结构的独特能力，其长度尺度与蛋白质分离相关。使用嵌段共聚物自组装和非溶剂诱导相分离的组合，可以以可扩展的方式制造具有目标孔径的膜。该项目的研究目标是增加支撑嵌段共聚物材料的孔隙率，将嵌段共聚物膜附着到织物背衬上，评估组装膜片材的性能，并将片材包装成设备配置。实现这些研究目标将产生一种机械坚固、易于实施的膜材料，可以将蛋白质过滤率提高 3-10 倍。