Purification of the Staphylococcus aureus bacteriophages VDX-10 on methacrylate monoliths

Bacteriophages (phages) are known to be useful in many fields from medicine to agriculture, and for a broad range of applications, including phage therapy and phage display. For some applications, especially in medicine, high purity and viability of phages are required. Methacrylate monoliths (Convective Interaction Media [CIM] monolithic columns), designed for purification of bionanoparticles, were applied for the purification of Staphylococcus aureus phages VDX-10 from bacterial lysate. With a single step purification method, more than 99% of host cell DNA and more than 90% of proteins were removed, with 60% recovery of viable phages. Comparable results were obtained when the purification method was scaled-up from a CIM monolithic disk to a larger CIM monolithic column. Additionally, the dynamic binding capacity of a methacrylate monolith column for S. aureus phages VDX-10 was determined.