Expanded Bed Adsorption

Expanded bed adsorption combines the essential product capture step with the separation of solids and liquids in one step, thus reducing the number of steps in a process, and has been well described and reviewed by Anspach et al. This approach can result in increased yield and reduced overall process time and cost. The first stabilised expanded bed adsorption column was developed in the early 1990s, and this approach has now been used in the processing of whole cell mammalian cell culture broth and has found successful application in affinity chromatography.
This approach has also been used for the purification of monoclonal antibodies, providing higher recovery at lower cost and shorter processing time compared with packed bed chromatography.
Expanded bed adsorption has also been used as an alternative process for the purification of an insulin precursor, MI3. Despite the apparent advantages, expanded bed adsorption currently remains an alternative technique and has not yet proven to be a threat to the dominance of packed bed chromatography in the biopharmaceutical industry.