An integrated expanded bed adsorption process for lactoferrin and immunoglobulin G purification from crude sweet whey

An integrated expanded bed adsorption process was developed in this study to purify lactoferrin and immunoglobulin G (IgG) from crude sweet whey. The process used two sequential expanded beds packed with a cationic exchanger (Fastline SP) and a mixed-mode resin (Streamline Direct CST-1), respectively. Lactoferrin was isolated in the first expanded bed packed with Fastline SP, and the flow through was loaded into the second expanded bed packed with Streamline Direct CST-1 to separate IgG. Three integration strategies were compared to improve the separation efficiency, especially for the purification of IgG in the second expanded bed. The purities of IgG obtained from these three strategies were 91.9%, 83.8% and 92.4%, and the recoveries were 14.3%, 63.7% and 29.7%, respectively. By efficient integration of the two expanded beds, lactoferrin and IgG were successfully recovered from crude sweet whey with high purities and reasonable recoveries. Moreover, the stream flowed out of the integrated process was collected and separated by ultrafiltration to produce whey protein concentrate. Therefore, sweet whey resource could be fully utilized. The results demonstrated that it is possible to purify multiple proteins from untreated crude resource with a rationally designed expanded bed adsorption process.