Quantitation of soluble aggregates in recombinant monoclonal antibody cell culture by pH-gradient protein A chromatography.

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) produced from mammalian cell culture may contain significant amounts of dimers and higher order aggregates. Quantitation of soluble aggregates in the cell culture is time-consuming and labor-intensive, usually involving a purification step to remove the impurities that interfere with the subsequent size exclusion chromatography (SEC) analysis. We have developed a novel pH-gradient protein A chromatography for rapid, non-size based separation of the aggregates in mAb cell culture samples.