Modeling ion-exchange adsorption of proteins in a spherical particle

Mechanistic modeling based process analytical technology implementation for pooling in hydrophobic interaction chromatography

A major challenge in chromatography purification of therapeutic proteins is batch-to-batch variability with respect to impurity levels and product concentration in the feed. Mechanistic model can enable process analytical technology (PAT) implementation by predicting impact of such variations and thereby improving the robustness of the resulting process and controls. This article presents one such application of mechanistic model of hydrophobic interaction chromatography (HIC) as a PAT tool for making robust pooling decisions to enable clearance of aggregates for a monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapeutic. Model predictions were performed before the actual chromatography experiments to facilitate feedforward control. The approach has been successfully demonstrated for four different feeds with varying aggregate levels (3.84%-5.54%) and feed concentration (0.6 mg/mL-1 mg/mL). The resulting pool consistently yielded a product with 1.32 ± 0.03% aggregate vs. a target of 1.5%. A comparison of the traditional approach involving column fractionation with the proposed approach indicates that the proposed approach results in achievement of satisfactory product purity (98.68 ± 0.03% for mechanistic model based PAT controlled pooling vs. 98.64 ± 0.16% for offline column fractionation based pooling). © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 35: e2758, 2019.

Competitive multicomponent anion exchange adsorption of proteins at the single molecule level

Super-resolution imaging of multicomponent, competitive adsorption demonstrates that competitors block certain ligands from the analyte without changing analyte adsorption kinetics.

Modeling competitive cytokine adsorption dynamics within hemoadsorption beads used to treat sepsis

Extracorporeal blood purification is a promising therapeutic modality for sepsis, a potentially fatal, dysfunctional immunologic state caused by infection. Removal of inflammatory mediators such as cytokines from the blood may help attenuate hyper-inflammatory signaling during sepsis and improve patient outcomes. We are developing a hemoadsorption device to remove cytokines from the circulating blood using biocompatible, porous sorbent beads. In this work, we investigated whether competitive adsorption of serum solutes affects cytokine removal dynamics within the hemoadsorption beads. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) was used to quantify intraparticle adsorption profiles of fluorescently labeled IL-6 in horse serum, and results were compared to predictions of a two component competitive adsorption model. Supraphysiologic IL-6 concentrations were necessary to obtain adequate CLSM signal, therefore unknown model parameters were fit to CLSM data at high IL-6 concentrations, and the fitted model was used to simulate cytokine adsorption behavior at physiologically relevant levels which were below the microscopy detection threshold. CLSM intraparticle IL-6 adsorption profiles agreed with predictions of the competitive adsorption model, indicating displacement of cytokine by high affinity serum solutes. However, competitive adsorption effects were predicted using the model to be negligible at physiologic cytokine concentrations associated with hemoadsorption therapy.

Patterns of protein adsorption in chromatographic particles visualized by optical microscopy

A new method is presented to image transient patterns of protein adsorption in individual spherical chromatographic particles under strong binding conditions. The method takes advantage of the difference in refractive index between the protein-free and protein-saturated adsorbent matrix. When the particles are viewed with an ordinary microscope using white light illumination, the adsorption front appears as a bright ring that moves in time from the surface of the particle to its center. Experimental data are obtained for the proteins lysozyme and albumin with a commercial agarose-based cation exchanger. Sharp rings are observed in both cases confirming that protein mass transfer within the particles occurs via a shell-progressive diffusion mechanism. Quantitative analysis based on the shrinking core model provides an accurate and precise way of determining the intraparticle diffusivity for individual particles as a function of protein concentration and mobile phase composition.

Adsorption equilibrium of fructosyltransferase on a weak anion-exchange resin

The adsorption equilibrium of a glycoprotein, fructosyltransferase from Aureobasidium pullulans, on an anion-exchange resin, Sepabeads FP-DA activated with 0.1M NaOH, was investigated. The adsorption isotherms were determined at 20 degrees C in a phosphate-citrate buffer with pH 6.0 using the static method. Sodium chloride was used to adjust the ionic strength in the range from 0.0215 to 0.1215 mol dm(-3) which provided conditions varying from a weak effect of salt concentration on protein binding to its strong suppression. The equilibrium data were very well fitted by means of the steric mass-action model when the ion-exchange capacity of 290 mmol dm(-3) was obtained from independent frontal column experiments. The model fit provided the protein characteristic charge equal to 1.9, equilibrium constant 0.326, and steric factor 1.095 x 10(5).

Chromatography of proteins on charge-variant ion exchangers and implications for optimizing protein uptake rates

Intraparticle transport of proteins usually represents the principal resistance controlling their uptake in preparative separations. In ion-exchange chromatography two limiting models are commonly used to describe such uptake: pore diffusion, in which only free protein in the pore lumen contributes to transport, and homogeneous diffusion, in which the transport flux is determined by the gradient in the total protein concentration, free or adsorbed. Several studies have noted a transition from pore to homogeneous diffusion with increasing ionic strength in some systems, and here we investigate the mechanistic basis for this transition. The studies were performed on a set of custom-synthesized methacrylate-based strong cation exchangers differing in ligand density into which uptake of two proteins was examined using confocal microscopy and frontal loading experiments. We find that the transition in uptake mechanism occurs in all cases studied, and generally coincides with an optimum in the dynamic binding capacity at moderately high flow rates. The transition appears to occur when protein-surface attraction is weakened sufficiently, and this is correlated with the isocratic retention factor k' for the system of interest: the transition occurs in the vicinity of k' approximately 3000. This result, which may indicate that adsorption is sufficiently weak to allow the protein to diffuse along or near the surface, provides a predictive basis for optimizing preparative separations using only isocratic retention data.

An exclusion mechanism in ion exchange chromatography

Protein dynamic binding capacities on ion exchange resins are typically expected to decrease with increasing conductivity and decreasing protein charge. There are, however, conditions where capacity increases with increasing conductivity and decreasing protein charge. Capacity measurements on two different commercial ion exchange resins with three different monoclonal antibodies at various pH and conductivities exhibited two domains. In the first domain, the capacity unexpectedly increased with increasing conductivity and decreasing protein charge. The second domain exhibited traditional behavior. A mechanism to explain the first domain is postulated; proteins initially bind to the outer pore regions and electrostatically hinder subsequent protein transport. Such a mechanism is supported by protein capacity and confocal microscopy studies whose results suggest how knowledge of the two types of IEX behavior can be leveraged in optimizing resins and processes.

Competitive adsorption of labeled and native protein in confocal laser scanning microscopy

Confocal laser scanning microscopy has been previously applied to the study of protein uptake in porous chromatography resins. This method requires labeling the protein with a fluorescent probe. The labeled protein is then diluted with a large quantity of native protein so that the fluorescence intensity is a linear function of the labeled protein concentration. Ideally, the attachment of a fluorescent probe should not affect the affinity of the protein for the stationary phase; however, recent experimental work has shown that this assumption is difficult to satisfy. In the present study, we present a mathematical model of protein diffusion and adsorption in a single adsorbent particle. The differences in adsorption behavior of labeled and native protein are accounted for by treating the system as a two-component system (labeled and native protein) described by the steric mass action isotherm (SMA). SMA parameters are regressed from experimental linear gradient elution data for lysozyme and lysozyme-dye conjugates (for the fluorescent dyes Cy3, Cy5, Bodipy FL, and Atto635). When the regressed parameters are employed in the model, an overshoot in the labeled lysozyme concentration is predicted for Cy5- and Bodipy-labeled lysozyme, but not for Atto635-labeled lysozyme. The model predictions agree qualitatively well with recent work showing the dependence of the concentration overshoot on the identity of the attached dye and provide further evidence that the overshoot is likely caused by the change of binding characteristics due to the fluorescent label.

A priori prediction of adsorption isotherm parameters and chromatographic behavior in ion-exchange systems

The a priori prediction of protein adsorption behavior has been a long-standing goal in several fields. In the present work, property-modeling techniques have been used for the prediction of protein adsorption thermodynamics in ion-exchange systems directly from crystal structure. Quantitative structure-property relationship models of protein isotherm parameters and Gibbs free energy changes in ion-exchange systems were generated by using a support vector machine regression technique. The predictive ability of the models was demonstrated for two test-set proteins not included in the model training set. Molecular descriptors selected during model generation were examined to gain insights into the important physicochemical factors influencing stoichiometry, equilibrium, steric effects, and binding affinity in protein ion-exchange systems. The a priori prediction of protein isotherm parameters can have direct implications for various ion-exchange processes. As proof of concept, a multiscale modeling approach was used for predicting the chromatographic separation of a test set of proteins using the isotherm parameters obtained from the quantitative structure-property relationship models. The simulated column separation showed good agreement with the experimental data. The ability to predict chromatographic behavior of proteins directly from their crystal structures may have significant implications for a range of biotechnology processes.

Protein-Labeling Effects in Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy

Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) is being increasingly used for observing protein uptake in porous chromatography resins. Recent CLSM studies have revealed the possible existence of a nondiffusive protein transport mechanism. Observing protein uptake with CLSM requires labeling the protein with a fluorescent probe. This study examines the effect of the probe identity on the subsequent CLSM adsorption profiles. The adsorption of lysozyme conjugated with different fluorescent probes (Cy5, BODIPY FL, Atto 635, and Atto 520) on SP Sepharose Fast Flow was measured using CLSM and zonal chromatography experiments. Results from zonal chromatography show that the retention time of lysozyme-dye conjugates differ significantly from unlabeled lysozyme. The change in retention of lysozyme upon conjugation with a fluorescent probe is consistent with the difference in net charge between the lysozyme-dye conjugate and unlabeled lysozyme. The adsorption profiles measured by CLSM show significantly different behavior depending upon whether the lysozyme-dye conjugate is retained longer or shorter than the unlabeled lysozyme. These results strongly suggest that the lysozyme concentration overshoot observed in previous CLSM experiments is the result of displacement of weaker binding labeled lysozyme by stronger binding unlabeled lysozyme.

Two-component protein adsorption kinetics in porous ion exchange media

This work provides a theoretical analysis of multicomponent adsorption kinetics for conditions typical of protein adsorption in porous ion exchangers as well as experimental results for the adsorption of lysozyme/cytochrome c mixtures in the cation exchanger SP-Sepharose-FF. The theory predicts the formation of overshoots in the intraparticle concentration profiles and in the total amount adsorbed for the more weakly adsorbed component. An analytical solution valid for the case where the isotherms are rectangular is developed and found to be in good agreement with the limiting behavior of the general numerical solution of the model equations. The experimental results show that the two proteins are competitively adsorbed and that an overshoot of adsorbed cytochrome c occurs during simultaneous adsorption. Model predictions based on the assumption that the adsorption isotherms are rectangular and that lysozyme completely displaces cytochrome c are in qualitative and quantitative agreement with the experimental kinetics suggesting that the overshoot phenomena observed with multicomponent systems in these resins can be explained with a diffusion model without the need to account for flux coupling or electrophoretic contributions to transport.