High throughput screening of chromatographic phases for rapid process development

The necessity of being "first on the market" paired with the need to cut production costs highlights the need for strategies and techniques allowing a fast process development while at the same time covering a high number of potential process parameters in order to reach an optimal process sequence. This can only be met by the use of high throughput screening (HTS) techniques. In this paper HTS applications presently applied in bioprocess development are reviewed, their use in chromatographic process parameter evaluation is discussed and concepts for the rational design of HTS experiments are presented. A rational approach for chromatographic parameter screening comprehends an initial screening procedure for ligand selection followed by the incorporation of specific adsorbent features using HTS pipetting systems finalized by a fine tuning step using packed mini-columns. The analytical part of these screening techniques clearly sets the bottleneck of these procedures with a trade off between analytical information and analysis time. Finally, intelligent HTS strategies should in addition include efficient data processing paired with modern tools for design of experiments or model based process design.