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.

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）II期项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力解决了制造蛋白质疗法或生物制剂的高成本。生物制剂是一种越来越多的治疗性类别，可以治疗从类风湿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，产生这些高效的治疗剂非常昂贵，大部分成本是由于复杂混合物从靶蛋白纯化而产生的。该II期项目旨在开发一种新的过滤器设备，使净化生物制剂更快，更便宜。过滤器介质将增加总体吞吐量，从而在纯化过程中降低瓶颈步骤。除了降低制造成本外，加快净化还增加了制造线的整体容量。这种高吞吐过滤器设备的设计旨在无缝地适合现有的纯化模块，从而使最终用户易于提高生产效率。该SBIR II期项目旨在显着改善用于蛋白质分离中的超滤膜的性能。目前，现有的超滤膜患有极低的吞吐量或宽孔径，限制了它们在分离过程中的功效。该项目利用了一种独特的聚合物材料（称为块共聚物）来制造克服先前结构限制的膜。也就是说，块共聚物膜具有很高的吞吐量和非常均匀的孔径。这些重要特征是由于块共聚物将自组装成周期性的有序结构的独特能力，其长度尺度与蛋白质分离有关的能力。使用块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靶孔尺寸的膜。该项目的研究目标是提高支撑块共聚物材料的孔隙率，将块共聚物膜连接到织物背衬上，评估组装的膜片库存的性能，然后将板块的储备包装到设备配置中。实现这些研究目标将导致机械稳定，易于实现的膜材料，可以将蛋白质过滤率提高3-10倍。