Development of process flow sheets for the purification of supercoiled plasmids for gene therapy applications

Human clinical trial of gene therapy with nonviral vectors demands large amounts of pharmaceutical-grade plasmid DNA. Since standard molecular biology methods cannot be used for this purpose, there is a need for the development of processing methodologies for the large-scale production and purification of plasmids. This work describes several studies that were undertaken during the development of process flow-sheets for the downstream processing of supercoiled plasmids. Anion-exchange HPLC was used as a routine technique for monitoring plasmid purity in process streams. The use of RNase or high temperatures during alkaline lysis was proved unnecessary. Instead, RNA could be completely removed by performing sequentially clarification with a chaotropic salt, concentration with PEG, and ion-exchange and size-exclusion chromatography. Also, clarification of streams by precipitation was independent of the chaotropic salt used. Furthermore, by proceeding directly from cell lysis to chromatography it was possible to obtain plasmid with purity/quality identical to that of the one obtained when clarification and concentration were included in the process. This strategy has the advantage of increasing the overall process yield to 38%. The plasmid thus purified was depleted of RNA, chromosomal DNA, and proteins. Additionally, no animal-derived enzymes, alcohols, or toxic solvents were used, rendering validation potentially easier. The results described in this report also indicate that downstream processing times and costs can be considerably reduced without affecting plasmid purity.