ORIGINAL ARTICLES  NEW TRENDS IN BIOENCAPSULATION - Part 1 

Minerva Biotecnologica 2005 December;17(4):215-29

Copyright © 2006 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Purification of natural anionic polymers

Sainz Vidal-Serp D., Wandrey C.

Ecole Polytecnique Fédérale de Lausannee, Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques, Lausanne, Switzerland

Aim. In this work, a study about the influence of experimental conditions on the yield of the purification process based on filtration and precipitation steps is presented. Furthermore, the contribution of different purification steps to the contaminant reduction was quantified.
Methods. The application of biopolymers and derivatives thereof in biotechnology, medicine and pharmacy requires the availability of highly purified and standardized materials. Purification processes and complementary analytics can be quite complex and expensive. For this reason, the down-stream processes required to produce biomedical-grade polymers are not always included in current polymer production. Consequently, the majority of basic polymeric components applied in cell encapsulation is usually not commercially available, or at a very high cost, at the purity and chemical standardization necessary for medical use.
Results. The purification procedure described here for the polyanions sodium alginate and sodium cellulose sulphate is simple and effective to reduce endotoxins, proteins and polyphenols to a very low level, e.g. 0.5%, 3% and 20% of the initial content, respectively, without major effect on polymer structural and macromolecular characteristics.
Conclusion. This procedure can be used to purify commercial polymers in a standard laboratory and can be easily scaled up for industrial production.