Rational development of two flowthrough purification strategies for adenovirus type 5 and retro virus-like particles

Enhanced Downstream Processing for a Cell-Based Avian Influenza (H5N1) Vaccine

H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) infections pose a significant threat to human health, with a mortality rate of around 50%. Limited global approval of H5N1 HPAIV vaccines, excluding China, prompted the need to address safety concerns related to MDCK cell tumorigenicity. Our objective was to improve vaccine safety by minimizing residual DNA and host cell protein (HCP). We developed a downstream processing method for the cell-based H5N1 HPAIV vaccine, employing CaptoTM Core 700, a multimodal resin, for polishing. Hydrophobic-interaction chromatography (HIC) with polypropylene glycol as a functional group facilitated the reversible binding of virus particles for capture. Following the two-step chromatographic process, virus recovery reached 68.16%. Additionally, HCP and DNA levels were reduced to 2112.60 ng/mL and 6.4 ng/mL, respectively. Western blot, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) confirmed the presence of the required antigen with a spherical shape and appropriate particle size. Overall, our presented two-step downstream process demonstrates potential as an efficient and cost-effective platform technology for cell-based influenza (H5N1 HPAIV) vaccines.

The downstream bioprocess toolbox for therapeutic viral vectors

Viral vectors are poised to acquire a prominent position in modern medicine and biotechnology owing to their role as delivery agents for gene therapies, oncolytic agents, vaccine platforms, and a gateway to engineer cell therapies as well as plants and animals for sustainable agriculture. The success of viral vectors will critically depend on the availability of flexible and affordable biomanufacturing strategies that can meet the growing demand by clinics and biotech companies worldwide. In this context, a key role will be played by downstream process technology: while initially adapted from protein purification media, the purification toolbox for viral vectors is currently undergoing a rapid expansion to fit the unique biomolecular characteristics of these products. Innovation efforts are articulated on two fronts, namely (i) the discovery of affinity ligands that target adeno-associated virus, lentivirus, adenovirus, etc.; (ii) the development of adsorbents with innovative morphologies, such as membranes and 3D printed monoliths, that fit the size of viral vectors. Complementing these efforts are the design of novel process layouts that capitalize on novel ligands and adsorbents to ensure high yield and purity of the product while safeguarding its therapeutic efficacy and safety; and a growing panel of analytical methods that monitor the complex array of critical quality attributes of viral vectors and correlate them to the purification strategies. To help explore this complex and evolving environment, this study presents a comprehensive overview of the downstream bioprocess toolbox for viral vectors established in the last decade, and discusses present efforts and future directions contributing to the success of this promising class of biological medicines.

Affinity and Pseudo-Affinity Membrane Chromatography for Viral Vector and Vaccine Purifications: A Review

Several chromatographic approaches have been established over the last decades for the production of pharmaceutically relevant viruses. Due to the large size of these products compared to other biopharmaceuticals, e.g., proteins, convective flow media have proven to be superior to bead-based resins in terms of process productivity and column capacity. One representative of such convective flow materials is membranes, which can be modified to suit the particular operating principle and are also suitable for economical single-use applications. Among the different membrane variants, affinity surfaces allow for the most selective separation of the target molecule from other components in the feed solution, especially from host cell-derived DNA and proteins. A successful membrane affinity chromatography, however, requires the identification and implementation of ligands, which can be applied economically while at the same time being stable during the process and non-toxic in the case of any leaching. This review summarizes the current evaluation of membrane-based affinity purifications for viruses and virus-like particles, including traditional resin and monolith approaches and the advantages of membrane applications. An overview of potential affinity ligands is given, as well as considerations of suitable affinity platform technologies, e.g., for different virus serotypes, including a description of processes using pseudo-affinity matrices, such as sulfated cellulose membrane adsorbers.

Adsorption Performance of a Multimodal Anion-Exchange Chromatography Membrane: Effect of Liquid Phase Composition and Separation Mode

Membrane chromatography is a modern, high-throughput separation method that finds important applications in therapeutic protein purification. Multimodal, salt-tolerant membranes are the most recent innovation in chromatographic membrane adsorbents. Due to the complex structure of their ligands and the bimodal texture of their carriers, their adsorption properties have not been sufficiently investigated. This work deals with the equilibrium and kinetic properties of a multimodal anion-exchange chromatography membrane, Sartobind STIC. Single- and two-component adsorption experiments were carried out with bovine serum albumin (BSA) and salmon DNA as model target and impurity components. The effect of the Hofmeister series ions and ionic strength on the BSA/DNA adsorption was investigated in micromembrane flow experiments. A significant difference was observed between the effects of monovalent and polyvalent ions when strong kosmotropic salts with polyvalent anions acted as strong displacers of BSA. On the contrary, DNA binding was rather high at elevated ionic strength, independent of the salt type. Two-component micromembrane experiments confirmed very high selectivity of DNA binding at a rather low sodium sulfate feed content and at pH 8. The strength of binding was examined in more than a dozen different desorption experiments. While BSA was desorbed relatively easily using high salt concentrations independent of buffer type and pH, while DNA was desorbed only in a very limited measure under any conditions. Separation experiments in a laboratory membrane module were carried out for the feed containing 1 g/L of BSA, 0.3 g/L of DNA, and 0.15 M of sodium sulfate. The negative flow-through mode was found to be more advantageous than the bind-elute mode, as BSA was obtained with 99% purity and a 97% yield. Membrane reuse was investigated in three adsorption-desorption-regeneration cycles.

Downstream processing for influenza vaccines and candidates: An update

Seasonal and pandemic influenza outbreaks present severe health and economic burdens. To overcome limitations on influenza vaccines' availability and effectiveness, researchers chase universal vaccines providing broad, long-lasting protection against multiple influenza subtypes, and including pandemic ones. Novel influenza vaccine designs are under development, in clinical trials, or reaching the market, namely inactivated, or live-attenuated virus, virus-like particles, or recombinant antigens, searching for improved effectiveness; all these bring downstream processing (DSP) new challenges. Having to deal with new influenza strains, including pandemics, requires shorter development time, driving the development of faster bioprocesses. To cope with better upstream processes, new regulatory demands for quality and safety, and cost reduction requirements, new unit operations and integrated processes are increasing DSP efficiency for novel vaccine formats. This review covers recent advances in DSP strategies of different influenza vaccine formats. Focus is given to the improvements on relevant state-of-the-art unit operations, from harvest and clarification to purification steps, ending with sterile filtration and formulation. The development of more efficient unit operations to cope with biophysical properties of the new candidates is discussed: emphasis is given to the design of new stationary phases, 3D printing approaches, and continuous processing tools, such as continuous chromatography. The impact of the production platforms and vaccine designs on the downstream operations for the different influenza vaccine formats approved for this season are highlighted.

Upstream and Downstream Processes for Viral Nanoplexes as Vaccines

The increasing medical interest in viral nanoplexes, such as viruses or virus-like particles used for vaccines, gene therapy products, or oncolytic agents, raises the need for fast and efficient production processes. In general, these processes comprise upstream and downstream processing. For the upstream process, efficiency is mainly characterized by robustly achieving high titer yields, while reducing process times and costs with regard to the cell culture medium, the host cell selection, and the applied process conditions. The downstream part, on the other hand, should effectively remove process-related contaminants, such as host cells/cell debris as well as host cell DNA and proteins, while maintaining product stability and reducing product losses. This chapter outlines a combination of process steps to successfully produce virus particles in the controlled environment of a stirred tank bioreactor, combined with a platform-based purification approach using filtration-based clarification and steric exclusion chromatography. Additionally, suggestions for off-line analytics in terms of virus characterization and quantification as well as for contaminant estimation are provided.

Selection of chromatographic methods for the purification of cell culture-derived Orf virus for its application as a vaccine or viral vector

•

Estimation of the isoelectric point and size of Vero cell-derived Orf virus.

•

Limited dynamic binding capacity of tested Orf virus to sulfated cellulose.

•

Purification of Orf virus by steric exclusion chromatography lead to 84 % recovery.

•

Hydrophobic interaction chromatography suitable for Orf virus purification.

•

Promising unit operations for a scalable DSP to produce Orf virus viral vectors.

In recent years, the Orf virus has become a promising tool for protective recombinant vaccines and oncolytic therapy. However, suitable methods for an Orf virus production, including up- and downstream, are very limited. The presented study focuses on downstream processing, describing the evaluation of different chromatographic unit operations. In this context, ion exchange-, pseudo-affinity- and steric exclusion chromatography were employed for the purification of the cell culture-derived Orf virus, aiming at a maximum in virus recovery and contaminant depletion. The most promising chromatographic methods for capturing the virus particles were the steric exclusion- or salt-tolerant anion exchange membrane chromatography, recovering 84 % and 86 % of the infectious virus. Combining the steric exclusion chromatography with a subsequent Capto™ Core 700 resin or hydrophobic interaction membrane chromatography as a secondary chromatographic step, overall virus recoveries of up to 76 % were achieved. Furthermore, a complete cellular protein removal and a host cell DNA depletion of up to 82 % was possible for the steric exclusion membranes and the Capto™ Core 700 combination.

The study reveals a range of possible unit operations suited for the chromatographic purification of the cell culture-derived Orf virus, depending on the intended application, i.e. a human or veterinary use, and the required purity.

Polysaccharide-based chromatographic adsorbents for virus purification and viral clearance

Viruses still pose a significant threat to human and animal health worldwide. In the fight against viral infections, high-purity viral stocks are needed for manufacture of safer vaccines. It is also a priority to ensure the viral safety of biopharmaceuticals such as blood products. Chromatography techniques are widely implemented at both academic and industrial levels in the purification of viral particles, whole viruses and virus-like particles to remove viral contaminants from biopharmaceutical products. This paper focuses on polysaccharide adsorbents, particulate resins and membrane adsorbers, used in virus purification/removal chromatography processes. Different chromatographic modes are surveyed, with particular attention to ion exchange and affinity/pseudo-affinity adsorbents among which commercially available agarose-based resins (Sepharose®) and cellulose-based membrane adsorbers (Sartobind®) occupy a dominant position. Mainly built on the development of new ligands coupled to conventional agarose/cellulose matrices, the development perspectives of polysaccharide-based chromatography media in this antiviral area are stressed in the conclusive part.

•

Chromatography has been and is still extensively implemented in virus purification/removal downstream processes.

•

Typical application fields are the manufacturing of purified viral vaccines and virus-free biopharmaceuticals.

•

Agarose and cellulose remain the primary polysaccharide bases for chromatography adsorbents in such virus-related applications.

•

Present R&D studies mainly focus on multimodal chromatography and affinity ligands.

Purification of flavivirus VLPs by a two-step chomatographic process

Flaviviruses are enveloped viruses with positive-sense, single-stranded RNA, which are most commonly transmitted by infected mosquitoes. Zika virus (ZIKV) and yellow fever virus (YFV) are flaviviruses that have caused significant outbreaks in the last few years. Since there is no approved vaccine against ZIKV, and since the existing YF attenuated vaccine presents disadvantages related to limited supply and to rare, but fatal adverse effects, there is an urgent need for new vaccines to control these diseases. Virus-like particles (VLPs) represent a recombinant platform to produce safe and immunogenic vaccines. Thus, based on our experience of expressing in recombinant mammalian cells VLPs of most flaviviruses circulating in the Americas, this work focused on the evaluation of chromatographic purification processes for zika and yellow-fever VLPs. The clarified cell culture supernatant was processed by a membrane-based anion-exchange chromatography and then a multimodal chromatographic step. With this process, it was possible to obtain the purified VLPs with a yield (including the clarification step) of 66.4% for zika and 68.1% for yellow fever. DNA clearance was in the range of 99.8-99.9%, providing VLP preparations that meet the WHO limit for this critical contaminant. Correct size and morphology of the purified VLPs were confirmed by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The promising results obtained for both zika and yellow fever VLPs indicate that this process could be potentially applied also to VLPs of other flaviviruses.

Downstream Processing Technologies/Capturing and Final Purification : Opportunities for Innovation, Change, and Improvement. A Review of Downstream Processing Developments in Protein Purification

Increased pressure on upstream processes to maximize productivity has been crowned with great success, although at the cost of shifting the bottleneck to purification. As drivers were economical, focus is on now on debottlenecking downstream processes as the main drivers of high manufacturing cost. Devising a holistically efficient and economical process remains a key challenge. Traditional and emerging protein purification strategies with particular emphasis on methodologies implemented for the production of recombinant proteins of biopharmaceutical importance are reviewed. The breadth of innovation is addressed, as well as the challenges the industry faces today, with an eye to remaining impartial, fair, and balanced. In addition, the scope encompasses both chromatographic and non-chromatographic separations directed at the purification of proteins, with a strong emphasis on antibodies. Complete solutions such as integrated USP/DSP strategies (i.e., continuous processing) are discussed as well as gains in data quantity and quality arising from automation and high-throughput screening (HTS). Best practices and advantages through design of experiments (DOE) to access a complex design space such as multi-modal chromatography are reviewed with an outlook on potential future trends. A discussion of single-use technology, its impact and opportunities for further growth, and the exciting developments in modeling and simulation of DSP rounds out the overview. Lastly, emerging trends such as 3D printing and nanotechnology are covered. Graphical Abstract Workflow of high-throughput screening, design of experiments, and high-throughput analytics to understand design space and design space boundaries quickly. (Reproduced with permission from Gregory Barker, Process Development, Bristol-Myers Squibb).

Simian adenovirus vector production for early-phase clinical trials: A simple method applicable to multiple serotypes and using entirely disposable product-contact components

A variety of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) compliant processes have been reported for production of non-replicating adenovirus vectors, but important challenges remain. Most clinical development of adenovirus vectors now uses simian adenoviruses or rare human serotypes, whereas reported manufacturing processes mainly use serotypes such as AdHu5 which are of questionable relevance for clinical vaccine development. Many clinically relevant vaccine transgenes interfere with adenovirus replication, whereas most reported process development uses selected antigens or even model transgenes such as fluorescent proteins which cause little such interference. Processes are typically developed for a single adenovirus serotype - transgene combination, requiring extensive further optimization for each new vaccine. There is a need for rapid production platforms for small GMP batches of non-replicating adenovirus vectors for early-phase vaccine trials, particularly in preparation for response to emerging pathogen outbreaks. Such platforms must be robust to variation in the transgene, and ideally also capable of producing adenoviruses of more than one serotype. It is also highly desirable for such processes to be readily implemented in new facilities using commercially available single-use materials, avoiding the need for development of bespoke tools or cleaning validation, and for them to be readily scalable for later-stage studies. Here we report the development of such a process, using single-use stirred-tank bioreactors, a transgene-repressing HEK293 cell - promoter combination, and fully single-use filtration and ion exchange components. We demonstrate applicability of the process to candidate vaccines against rabies, malaria and Rift Valley fever, each based on a different adenovirus serotype. We compare performance of a range of commercially available ion exchange media, including what we believe to be the first published use of a novel media for adenovirus purification (NatriFlo® HD-Q, Merck). We demonstrate the need for minimal process individualization for each vaccine, and that the product fulfils regulatory quality expectations. Cell-specific yields are at the upper end of those previously reported in the literature, and volumetric yields are in the range 1 × 10¹³ - 5 × 10¹³ purified virus particles per litre of culture, such that a 2-4 L process is comfortably adequate to produce vaccine for early-phase trials. The process is readily transferable to any GMP facility with the capability for mammalian cell culture and aseptic filling of sterile products.

Purification of influenza virus-like particles using sulfated cellulose membrane adsorbers

BACKGROUND

Vaccines based on virus-like particles (VLPs) are an alternative to inactivated viral vaccines that combine good safety profiles with strong immunogenicity. In order to be economically competitive, efficient manufacturing is required, in particular downstream processing, which often accounts for major production costs. This study describes the optimization and establishment of a chromatography capturing technique using sulfated cellulose membrane adsorbers (SCMA) for purification of influenza VLPs.

RESULTS

Using a design of experiments approach, the critical factors for SCMA performance were described and optimized. For optimal conditions (membrane ligand density: 15.4 µmol cm-2, salt concentration of the loading buffer: 24 mmol L-1 NaCl, and elution buffer: 920 mmol L-1 NaCl, as well as the corresponding flow rates: 0.24 and 1.4 mL min-1), a yield of 80% in the product fraction was obtained. No loss of VLPs was detected in the flowthrough fraction. Removal of total protein and DNA impurities were higher than 89% and 80%, respectively.

CONCLUSION

Use of SCMA represents a significant improvement compared with conventional ion exchanger membrane adsorbers. As the method proposed is easily scalable and reduces the number of steps required compared with conventional purification methods, SCMA could qualify as a generic platform for purification of VLP-based influenza vaccines. © 2017 The Authors. Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Size-selective purification of hepatitis B virus-like particle in flow-through chromatography: Types of ion exchange adsorbent and grafted polymer architecture

Hepatitis B virus-like particles expressed in Escherichia coli were purified using anion exchange adsorbents grafted with polymer poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate) in flow-through chromatography mode. The virus-like particles were selectively excluded, while the relatively smaller sized host cell proteins were absorbed. The exclusion of virus-like particles was governed by the accessibility of binding sites (the size of adsorbents and the charge of grafted dextran chains) as well as the architecture (branch-chain length) of the grafted polymer. The branch-chain length of grafted polymer was altered by changing the type of monomers used. The larger adsorbent (90 μm) had an approximately twofold increase in the flow-through recovery, as compared to the smaller adsorbent (30 μm). Generally, polymer-grafted adsorbents improved the exclusion of the virus-like particles. Overall, the middle branch-chain length polymer grafted on larger adsorbent showed optimal performance at 92% flow-through recovery with a purification factor of 1.53. A comparative study between the adsorbent with dextran grafts and the polymer-grafted adsorbent showed that a better exclusion of virus-like particles was achieved with the absorbent grafted with inert polymer. The grafted polymer was also shown to reduce strong interaction between binding sites and virus-like particles, which preserved the particles' structure.

A fast and efficient purification platform for cell-based influenza viruses by flow-through chromatography

Since newly emerging influenza viruses with pandemic potentials occurred in recent years, the demand for producing pandemic influenza vaccines for human use is high. For the development of a quick and efficient vaccine production, we proposed an efficient purification platform from the harvest to the purified bulk for the cell-based influenza vaccine production. This platform based on flow-through chromatography and filtration steps and the process only involves a few purification steps, including depth filtration, inactivation by formaldehyde, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, anion-exchange and ligand-core chromatography and sterile filtration. In addition, in the proposed chromatography steps, no virus capture steps were employed, and the purification results were not affected by the virus strain variation, host cells and culturing systems. The results from different virus strains which produced by Vero or MDCK cells in different culturing systems also obtained 33-46% HA recovery yields by this platform. The overall removal rates of the protein and DNA concentration in the purified bulk were over 96.1% and 99.7%, respectively. The low residual cellular DNA concentrations were obtained ranged from 30 to 130pg per human dose (15µg/dose). All influenza H5N1 purified bulks met the regulatory requirements for human vaccine use.