Application of novel mixed mode chromatography (MMC) resins having a hydrophobic modified polyallylamine ligand for monoclonal antibody purification

Polyallylamine (PAA) has been utilized as a salt tolerant anion exchange chromatography ligand in downstream processing of biopharmaceuticals. We have developed novel MMC resins based on PAA polymer ligand partially modified with hydrophobic butyl or phenyl group. The resulting hydrophobic modified PAA ligand reduced HCP level to 12% (21-23 ppm) under 6 mS/cm in a flow-through polishing step of mAb, while not modified PAA ligand showed only 79% (145 ppm). We also found that structure of hydrophobic groups in the ligand mainly influenced on mAb yield. That is 25% increase of phenyl group modification ratio reduces mAb yield from 95% to 90%. On the other hand, modification with butyl group kept mAb yield more than 95%. The optimized ligand structure displayed a wide operational conductivity range. Extended purification studies of mAb using the MMC resin in the flow-through polishing step were carried out under optimized pH and conductivity condition as determined in a DOE study. The study revealed that the MMC resin was effective for developing one-step flow-through polishing workflow for mAb purification. In addition, the MMC flow-through polishing step could be directly coupled with a specified CEX chromatography step to efficiently remove mAb aggregates from 2.3% to <1.0% to achieve a biopharmaceutical-grade quality and a high yield of mAb (>93%) with a high loading capacity around 1000 mg/mL-resin. This new MMC resin will be useful in future mAb manufacturing platforms comprising of a robust and cost-effective flow-through polishing step.