Nils Arnold Brechmann

PhD student at the Department of Industrial Biotechnology in the Cell Technology Group 

Working for the Competence Centre for Advanced Bioproduction by Continuous Processing (AdBIOPRO) on magnetic bead-based purification as an alternative downstream process for the production of biopharmaceuticals.

Monoclonal antibodies, which are proteins, play a major role in today´s fight against severe and/or chronic diseases such as cancer for example. The production of those proteins is a fairly complex and difficult process that relies on many different factors to be successful. One of these factors is the purification (cleaning) step, which ensures a high purity of the protein that later becomes a drug for cancer treatment. The purification is the challenge driving my research, especially how we can develop new processes in order to make the purification more efficient. 

The project I am currently involved in is part of the AdBIOPRO competence center, which aims to take a leading role in the work of continuous biomanufacturing. My research focuses on the use of magnetic particles for purification of monoclonal antibodies. We identified the use of magnetic particles and a magnetic separator as a powerful tool to combine the process steps of centrifugation, filtration, and antibody capture in a single step. In my research I use this tool to develop novel processes for the purification of biopharmaceuticals, to make the process more streamlined and more efficient to overcome current production bottlenecks.