Towards on-column monitoring of protein purification by ATR-FTIR and Raman Spectroscopy

生物制药是将蛋白质用作药物的新兴领域，用于治疗包括风湿性关节炎和癌症在内的一系列疾病。虽然这些疗法已被证明非常有效，但由于需要复杂的大规模生产过程，它们也非常昂贵（每治疗约10,000英镑）。最昂贵的步骤是蛋白A亲和捕获。我们小组之前的研究利用了一种称为衰减全反射-傅里叶变换红外（ATR-FTIR）光谱的专门技术来探索蛋白质a树脂衰变的原因。本提案中概述的研究旨在利用这种方法进一步表征结合能衰减，并开发出一种方法，使其成为工业生物加工环境中科学家们有用的工具。我们的直接监测方法将为Protein A的纯化提供更大的控制，并有可能延长树脂的使用寿命，节省生产成本。

Biopharmaceuticals, proteins used as drugs, are an emerging area in the treatment of a range of diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and cancer. While these therapeutics have been shown to be very effective, they are also extremely expensive (~£10,000s/treatment), due to the complex, large scale production processes required. The most expensive step is Protein A affinity capture. Previous research by our group has utilised a specialized technique called Attenuated Total Reflectance-Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy to explore the causes of Protein A resin decay. The research outlined in this proposal aims to further characterise binding capacity decay using this approach and also develop the approach to make this a tool that will be useful to scientists in an industrial bioprocessing environment. Our direct monitoring approach will provide much greater control into Protein A purification and has the potential to extend resin life time, saving production costs.