Editorial 2 Editorial What can cell culture flocculation offer for antibody purification processes “The eventual goal of the application of flocculation in monoclonal antibody processing is to develop a separation unit operation alternative to chromatography, with equivalent separation efficiency, Pharm. Bioprocess. high process capacity, good facility fit and sound process economics.” Keywords: antibody • flocculation • harvest • impurity removal • purification Recent advances in cell culture processes solid content with wide particle distribution Yun (Kenneth) Kang have significantly increased monoclonal anti- and a high percentage of small particles fur- Author for correspondence: body (mAb) titers to levels as high as 30 g/l. ther complicate the harvest unit operation, BioProcess Sciences, Eli Lilly Not unexpectedly, these improvements have requiring significantly higher depth filter & Company, 450 East 29th Street, New York, NY 10016, USA resulted in a new set of starting conditions surface area which may exceed the existing
[email protected] for downstream processing, including: ele- filtration train capacity. Harvest operations vated cell density levels (up to 108 cells/ml), have become extremely challenging, if not Dale L Ludwig BioProcess Sciences, Eli Lilly increased solid content (packed cell volume, impossible because of these issues. & Company, 450 East 29th Street, up to 40%) and increased soluble impurity Flocculation has been widely used for New York, NY 10016, USA levels such as host cell proteins (HCP) and many years in the chemical and food indus- Paul Balderes high molecular weight species (HMW; up tries, as well as in wastewater treatment. In BioProcess Sciences, Eli Lilly to 40%) [1–4] . New advances in mAb down- recent years, flocculation-based pretreatment & Company, 450 East 29th Street, stream processing are critically needed, in of cell cultures to circumvent both harvest New York, NY 10016, USA order to meet the significant challenges posed and purification issues experienced in mAb by increased cell culture productivity.