Problem:

Excessive time and risk of product loss have been associated with clarifying and sterile filtering complex suspension cell cultures for protein purification.

Recently, biopharmaceutical research processes have been associated with culturing high protein expressing cell lines. This work generates challenges in cell clarification, sterilization, and further downstream processing. Large amounts of biomass and contaminating cell debris produced during cell culture and harvesting must be efficiently processed. Traditionally, centrifugation plus a combination of filtration methods have been widely accepted techniques for clarifying these cell cultures. But this time-consuming and tedious manual workflow can require more than 1 hour to process a single 24-well plate. In addition, there is potential risk for lost samples, high hold-up volumes, process error, and lower protein recovery

Solution: 

New filtration technology combines cell clarification and sterile filtration into one step

To help streamline protein purification, Pall has developed the AcroPrep™ 24-well filter plate. This new technology employs a multi-layer filter plate combining cell clarification and sterile filtration. The device incorporates a top layer consisting of a depth filter that efficiently clarifies whole cells and removes large cellular debris. A lower layer consisting of a dual 0.65/0.2 μm Supor® EKV membrane provides high-performance sterile filtration. With either a vacuum manifold or centrifuge, the filter plate effortlessly recovers proteins from whole cell cultures up to 25M+ cells/mL in less than 20 minutes. It also uses seven times less plastic consumables by weight than traditional forms of recovery.