Pre-treatment of plant extracts for enhancing recovery and purification of high-value bio-therapeutics

生物治疗剂，如单克隆抗体，广泛用于治疗危及生命的疾病，目前是通过哺乳动物细胞培养生产的。使用哺乳动物细胞培养进行大规模生产在技术上具有挑战性且成本高昂。生物制药，即在植物中表达治疗性蛋白质，是一种新型的、可规模化的、安全的、经济的、环境友好的和有前途的哺乳动物细胞培养的替代品。PlantForm公司是一家总部位于安大略的生物制药公司，在制造基于烟草的生物治疗剂方面有着良好的记录。该公司认识到，产品纯化前的原料预处理可能会显著影响纯化工艺的效率。这种预处理将使用申请人的研究小组开发的新型膜技术来去除烟草提取物中存在的杂质，例如RUBISCO和色素。通过预处理步骤去除这些关键杂质有望提高整体纯化效率，并有助于提高产品纯度和回收率，降低生产成本。

Bio-therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies which are widely used for treating life-threatening ailments arecurrently manufactured by mammalian cell culture. Large-scale production using mammalian cell culture istechnically challenging and expensive. Bio-pharming, i.e. expression of therapeutic proteins in plant is a novel,scalable, safe, economical, environment -friendly and promising alternative to mammalian cell culture.PlantForm Corporation is an Ontario based bio-pharming company with an established track record inmanufacturing tobacco based bio-therapeutics. The company recognises that feedstock pre-treatment beforeproduct purification could significantly affect the efficiency of the purification process. Such pre-treatment willtarget the removal of impurities such as RUBISCO and pigments present in tobacco extract using novelmembrane technology developed in the applicant's research group. Removing these key impurities throughpre-treatment step is expected to increase the overall purification efficiency and contribute towards increasedproduct purity and recovery, and lowering of manufacturing cost.