AbSolute High Cap from Novasep can capture monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies from high titre and large volume feedstock. According to the company, the product can outperform other approaches on the market by 50-200% in a wide range of flow rates. AbSolute High Cap could enable biopharmaceutical companies to reduce significantly the cost of protein A resins, with potential savings of up to a few million US dollars per year on a commercial scale. The cost of downstream processing is around 70% of the manufacturing cost of mAb with the capture step being the single most costly step, as it uses the very expensive protein A based affinity chromatography resins (media). Currently the market size of protein A resins is estimated at US$150-200 million, Novasep says. Because of the improved productivity achieved by using AbSolute High Cap, less resin is required to perform the purification of the same volume of fermentation feedstock. In this way, the Novasep product can lead to reduction in the cost of goods for monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies. Resin savings are estimated up to two million dollars per year for large productions (for a 1.5 g/L mAb titre and 20,000 L bioreactors). This is particularly significant for the near term production of biosimilars because the cost of goods is more critical, but it could also be considered by any biotech that needs to scale up the production of their developmental antibodies or significantly reduce their upfront consumables expense, the company advises.
