Novel purification process for camelid heavy chain antibodies

KNAUER Wissenschaftliche Geräte GmbH and 3B Pharmaceuticals GmbH today announced the successful completion of a federal grant program exploiting the potential of camelid antibodies.

Figure 1: The advantageous properties of heavy chain antibodies compared to conventional antibodies.

Combining 3B Pharmaceuticals’ PurAffin™ platform for affinity ligand design and KNAUER’s expertise in chromatography systems and matrix development, the companies delivered a purification process for camelid heavy chain antibodies to the project consortium.

Due to their comparatively low molecular weight, high stability and better bioavailability, heavy-chain antibodies have shown great potential as a resource for the development of therapeutics and research tools.

“KNAUER’s expertise in downstream-process development and automated continuous chromatography perfectly complements 3B Pharmaceuticals PurAffin™ platform”, states Dr. Matthias Paschke, Director Biology & Assay Technologies at 3B Pharmaceuticals. “Camelid antibodies are the latest class of biologics for which peptidomimetic affinity purification solutions have become available.”

Through the excellent collaboration with 3B Pharmaceuticals we are proud to reach yet another milestone in our purification service portfolio at KNAUER´s LC LAB department” added Dr. Veit Althoff, project leader and application specialist at KNAUER. “The new Azura Bio systems perfectly overcame the innovative challenge of a scalable camelid antibody purification process”.

The consortium comprising five project partners from industry and academia is led by Prof. Katja Hanack from Potsdam University. The “Camelid antibody” project has received funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the framework of the BMBF - innovation initiative “InnoProfile-Transfer” supporting mid-sized companies in the Berlin-Brandenburg region under grant agreement 03IPT703.

Project website: www.unternehmen-region.de/de/7563.php

About KNAUER

KNAUER Wissenschaftliche Geräte GmbH is a German family-owned global manufacturer and distributor of laboratory instrumentation founded in 1962. The company’s portfolio includes HPLC, FPLC and UHPLC systems, preparative HPLC instruments and process LC solutions from high-resolution analysis to large scale purification.

As an ISO 9001 and 14001 certified company KNAUER continuously strives for innovation. Its products have to date won more than 20 innovation awards. For more information on KNAUER, visit www.knauer.net.