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Chromatographic purification of recombinant human erythropoietin

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Abstract

Recombinant human erythropoietin is a valuable therapeutic protein used in the treatment of several serious diseases. It exists in different isoforms and is produced by genetically modified mammalian cells such as Chinese hamster ovary or human embryonic kidney cells. As for other biopharmaceutical drugs, a key factor for its successful industrial production is to achieve a high degree of purity and to decrease the content of critical impurities to trace amounts. This goal is achieved in the separation sequence which substantial part is formed by chromatographic steps. Therefore, downstream processing forms an essential part of production costs. This review presents the overview of published separation sequences and, analyzes the use of different types of chromatographic media such as affinity, ion-exchange, reversed-phase, hydrophobic interaction, multimodal, and size-exclusion chromatography adsorbents. Their application is discussed with regard to their place in the purification stages generally denoted as capture, intermediate purification and polishing.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic for the Structural Funds of EU (Grant Number: ITMS 26240220071), the Slovak Research and Development Agency (Grant Number: APVV-14-0474) and the Slovak Grant Agency for Science (Grant Number: VEGA 1/0573/17).

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Correspondence to Milan Polakovič.

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Adamíková, J., Antošová, M. & Polakovič, M. Chromatographic purification of recombinant human erythropoietin. Biotechnol Lett 41, 483–493 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-019-02656-8

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