Adsorption Chromatography for Protein Purification

Abstract

Today the number of new therapeuticals produced by genetically engineered cells is increasing rapidly. The requirements for purity and biological activity are extremely high as nobody wants to take the risk of transferring any unwanted genetical information with the product into a human being. Therefore the purification methods have to be very efficient but also very mild in order not to do any harm to the biomolecule. Chromatography is the only technique available to fulfill these requirements and therefore is used extensively during downstream purification procedures. Adsorption techniques like affinity chromatography, hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC) or ion exchange chromatography are mainly used because they guarantee high yields in short times at relatively low cost. The following lecture describes these methods in detail and gives examples of applications.