Large-scale preparation of a highly purified solvent-detergent treated factor VIII concentrate

Large-scale adaptation of a recently reported glycine precipitation method for the production of factor VIII (FVIII) concentrate is described. Scaling up of the method required some modification including the addition of aluminum hydroxide to the glycine buffer to reduce the level of contaminating proteins in the final preparation and the use of centrifugation to replace filtration by glass beads. Furthermore, the resultant product was virus inactivated by incorporation of the organic solvent and detergent technique. At industrial level, the modified method gave a good recovery of FVIII activity (230 IU/l plasma) with high purity (4 IU/mg protein). The final product, after virus inactivation and lyophilization, yielded 185 IU of FVIII activity per liter of starting plasma and was considered to be suitable for clinical evaluation.