Affinity precipitation of a monoclonal antibody from an industrial harvest feedstock using an ELP-Z stimuli responsive biopolymer.

In this work, a proof of concept elastin-like polypeptide-Z domain fusion (ELP-Z) based affinity precipitation process is developed for monoclonal antibody (mAb) purification from industrial harvest feeds. Greater than 99% mAb recoveries are obtained during the initial binding step of the process for both pure mAb and the mAb harvest feeds. Great than 90% overall mAb yields are also obtained for the subsequent elution step of the process with no measurable mAb aggregation. The process is shown to result in more than 2 logs of host cell protein (HCP) and more than 4 logs of DNA clearance from the harvest feed. While the overall mAb yield and HCP clearance for the affinity precipitation process was comparable to Protein A chromatography the DNA clearance was clearly superior. Performance is maintained for mAb final elution concentrations up to 20 g/L, demonstrating the ability of the process to both concentrate and purify the mAb. Effective ELP-Z regeneration is also demonstrated using 0.1 M NaOH with no adverse effect on subsequent capture efficiency. Finally, the reusability of the ELP-Z construct and robustness of the process is demonstrated for up to three purification-regeneration cycles with minimal product and impurity carryover and high yields and purity. This work demonstrates that the ELP-Z based precipitation approach can be successfully employed as an affinity capture step for industrial mAbs.