Using Mechanistic Modeling for Understanding Antibiotics Purification with Ion Exchange Chromatography

In this work, we studied the purification with ion exchange chromatography of an aminoglycoside antibiotic industrially produced by Fareva. To do so, we performed a set of well targeted experiments and developed a physical model properly describing the ion exchange mechanism and acid-base equilibria in solution using the simulation software Ypso-Ionic. Our approach allowed us to rationalize few intriguing observations like the unexpectedly low capacity of the resin for the antibiotic or the strong influence of the counterion on the separation of two isomers of the antibiotic. Our findings illustrate the strength of using rigorous ion exchange models – as opposed to the often used classical adsorption models – to describe ion exchange chromatography.