Reverse Micelle Extraction of Monoclonal Antibodies

单抗是人体用来对抗许多疾病和感染的大蛋白，因此需要越来越多的单抗。目前，它们主要用于诊断测试，数量很少，因此非常昂贵。大部分成本是由于它们在生物发酵中的稀释性质，以及它们在非常昂贵的A蛋白色谱柱上的分离，这些色谱柱对稀释量具有非常高的选择性。这项提议想要开发一种非常廉价的方法来纯化这些单抗，使用一种含有非常小的表面活性剂聚集体的溶剂(反胶束-RM)，它可以选择性地将这些单抗从其原始来源中分离出来。我们想要研究这种情况发生的速度有多快，我们如何使用它们来纯化单抗，以及如何阻止它们在两相(发酵液和溶剂)之间的相界上沉淀。

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).