Affinity precipitation an option for early capture in bioprocessing

Affinity precipitation is a bioseparation technique where the affinity ligand is coupled to a stimuliresponsive polymer. Stimuli-responsive polymers show abrupt, yet reversible, phase transition (precipitation) in response to a small change in an environmental parameter. The corresponding ligand conjugates can be used to co-precipitate and thereby capture and isolate target molecules from complex solutions such as culture supernatants and cell lysates. The approach is compatible with a 'discardibles only' type of downstream process and can be scaled over several orders of magnitude. This report discusses the set-up and development of affinity precipitation procedures, the related instrumentation and scale up, as well as applications for the isolation of proteins and polynucleotides.