Monolithic beds of artificial gel antibodies

The introductions of the continuous beds, now often called monoliths [S. Hjertén, J.-L. Liao, R. Zhang, J. Chromatogr. 473 (1989), 273-275] and the artificial, highly selective gel antibodies against antigens as large as proteins, viruses and cells [J.-L. Liao, Y. Wang, S. Hjertén, Chromatographia 42 (1996), 259-262] were breakthroughs in the design of chromatographic beds. This paper deals with a combination of these two methods, i.e., the artificial gel antibodies have been synthesized in the monolithic mode. As antigen we have used human hemoglobin. A comparison of the ion-exchange chromatograms of the eluates from the monolithic columns shows that the monolith prepared in the presence of hemoglobin adsorbed this protein, but not the other proteins in the sample (ribonuclease A and cytochrome c), i.e., this monolith was selective for hemoglobin, whereas the blank column (prepared in the absence of hemoglobin) had no selective properties, since none of the applied proteins were adsorbed. The diameter of the column was 6mm, but the same approach to synthesize a monolithic selective bed can very likely also be used for capillaries and microchips.