Aleš Štrancar
BIA Separations, Slovenia
Title: High resolution monolithic columns - enabling tool for understanding viral structures and their purity
Biography
Biography: Aleš Štrancar
Abstract
HPLC is one of the key methods to analyse the concentration of molecules and substantially help to study their structures.
Although being vastly used for small molecules and for most of biomolecules the HPLC has not been much applied for
viral (such as viral vectors, viral particle based vaccines, phages, VLPs) analytics. Viral based structures can be, from the point
of their chromatographic properties, regarded as very big protein, and as such analysed. From this point of view, the HPLC
could easily be applied for the tasks. It was the chromatographic resin structure with diff usive end pores, too small to allow
most of viral structures to enter, which was limiting the use of the HPLC in this fi eld. Introduction of monolithic resins with
open channels and no diff usive pores enabled the HPLC to be extensively applied for viral structures separations. Entrapment
of the viral structures and carry-over has been dumped and time of the analysis accelerated. Surprisingly also the resolution
power has been greatly improved when compared to traditional chromatographic resins. As result, the HPLC columns based
on CIM monolithic chromatographic supports are not only able to determine the ratio of full and empty viral capsids but can
further separate and analyse subpopulations of the capsids, as will be shown in this presentation. Th is feature is opening new
era in the study of viral structures and understanding of their properties, effi ciency and safety.