Reverse Micelle Extraction of Monoclonal Antibodies

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Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are large proteins the body uses to fight many diseases and infections, and hence they are needed in larger and larger quantities. At the moment they are used in minute quantities for mainly diagnostic testing, and hence are very expensive. Most of this cost is due to their dilute nature in the biological fermentation they are produced in, and their separation on very expensive Protein A chromatographic columns which are very selective for the dilute amounts. This proposal wants to develop a very cheap method for purifying these mAbs using a solvent with very small aggregations of surfactants in it (Reverse Micelles-RM) which can selectively separate these mAbs from their original source. We want to study how fast this occurs, how we can use them to purify mAbs, and how we can stop them precipitating on the phase boundary between the two phases (fermentation broth and solvent).