A custom ÄKTA avant configuration enabling automated parallel protein purification over a range of process scales

Biologics are making up an increasing proportion of the global drug discovery pipeline. Supporting the expansion of biologics drug discovery requires higher throughput techniques for the expression, purification and characterization of both therapeutic candidates and reagents. Here we describe the programming and development of a novel ÄKTA™ instrument configuration that enables automated parallel and multistep chromatography over a range of scales. The programming strategy is offered as open source and the custom plumbing configuration was developed with off the shelf components available from Cytiva. Combined with high flow resin technology we show how this strategy can reduce the duration of a standard antibody purification process by 4.5X, from 4.5 h down to 1 h per run. An automated loading strategy was also developed to enable true walk away application of up to 24 samples and around the clock processing capability. The techniques used here to accomplish parallel multistep chromatography can be duplicated or modified for specific applications and represent a straightforward and cost-effective means to eliminate protein purification bottlenecks.