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

广泛用于治疗危及生命的疾病的生物疗法，如单抗，目前是由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，而且成本高昂。生物制药，即在植物中表达治疗性蛋白质，是一种新型的、可扩展的、安全的、经济的、环境友好的哺乳动物细胞培养的替代方案。PlantForm公司是一家总部位于安大略省的生物制药公司，在制造烟草生物疗法方面有着良好的记录。该公司认识到，在产品净化之前对原料进行预处理可能会显著影响净化过程的效率。这种前处理的目标是使用申请者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，如Rubisco和色素。通过前处理步骤去除这些关键杂质有望提高整体净化效率，有助于提高产品纯度和回收率，并降低制造成本。

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.