ChromaWeb®

High Resolution, Scalable Membrane Chromatography

From the inventors of the Chromassette® Platform, a modular chromatography device for bead-based media, the ChromaWeb® cassette solves the challenge of achieving very uniform distribution across a large frontal area with a shallow bed.

A fluid diagram representation of a ChromaWeb cassette
									 cross section. The feed stream enters in the upper left.
									 Inside the device the flow is split: one arrow indicates some
									 flow continuing to a subsequent cassette in a potential
									 stack, and another arrow indicates flow continuing to the
									 chromatographic bed. Flow arrows indicate flow distributing
									 along and through the bed, and additional flow arrows
									 indicate flow collected on the downstream side of the bed
									 then directed to a flow convergence which is the mirror of
									 the previous split. More flow arrows indicate a combining of
									 two streams, one of which would be flow coming from a
									 previous cassette, the other is flow which traveled through
									 the bed. The combined flow continues out of the eluent stream
									 in the lower right.

The ChromaWeb® device is a stackable adsorptive cassette suitable for planar media, including membranes, nonwoven webs and monoliths. It is novel and highly differentiated:

  • It is linearly scalable.

  • It has high resolution in spite of a shallow bed.

In fact, it is the only chromatographic platform for shallow beds that is both high-resolution and scalable. Because of this, the ChromaWeb® Cassette is the only practical configuration for scale-up of planar adsorptive media.

Critical for Unlocking Cutting Edge Therapeutics

A new class of therapeutics is set to boom in the coming decade based on gene therapy and viral vectors delivered in and ex vivo. These vectors are too large for chromatographic beads to be effective, having a molecular dimension 20~350 nm. The downstream processing of these agents is in its early stages with few (or no) devices suitable for their purification. Large pore adsorptive media, with pores of 1~6 µm will be necessary to serve this growing application class. The ChromaWeb® platform is the only platform compatible with this class of media that is also high-resolution and scalable.

A comparative size diagram of six viruses, in descending
												scale from left to right. The leftmost virus is
												rectangular and is labeled as Vaccinia virus (VV), with
												a size of roughly 350 by 250 nanometers, followed by
												another rectangular virus labeled as Vesicular
												Stomatitis (VSV) at roughly 170 by 70 nanometers. The
												next four viruses are approximately circular: Lentivirus
												at roughly 120 nanometers, Adenovirus at roughly 90
												nanometers, Adeno-associated Virus (AAV) at roughly 25
												nanometers, and mAb at roughly 5 nanometers.

Image Credit: McMaster University Latulippe Lab team (created using BioRender.com)

A Modular Chromatography Platform

The previous flow diagram figure is expanded to include a
								 stack of two cassettes. The flow diagram shows the same fluid
								 distribution network within each cassette: flow enters the feed
								 end, is split, some flow continues through the bed, the flow
								 which goes through the bed is combined into the eluent stream.
								 In addition there are two holder blocks shown on supporting
								 each end of the stack. The holder blocks also show the entrance
								 for the feed stream and the collection of the eluent stream.
  • High-performance chromatography

  • Stackable

  • Linearly scalable

  • Right-sizing of adsorptive media

  • Easy to assemble & set up

  • Protected by issued and pending patents

ChromaWeb® Cassette – Very Low Dispersion

The superior flow distribution within a ChromaWeb® cassette leads to a high plate count and an asymmetry near 1. As cassettes are stacked, the bed volume grows linearly while maintaining high performance.

Elution of 0.25 mL 1 M NaCl Tracer in 0.1M NaCl at 30 cmhr
Elution of 0.25 milliliters of 1-molar sodium chloride tracer in 0.1-molar sodium chloride at 30 centimeters-per-hour 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 Volume (mL) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Conductance (mS/cm) A set of axes for a line chart. The X-axis is in terms of volume, and goes from 0 to 24 milliliters. There are faint grid lines every 2 milliliters labeled with their X-value. The Y-axis is in terms of conductance, and goes from 0 to 8 millisiemens-per-centimeter. There are faint grid lines every millisiemen-per-centimeter labeled with their Y-value. Test conditions: AKTA Prime Mobile Phase: 0.1M NaCl V = 30 cm/hr Tracer: 0.25 mL 1M NaCl
Serial # Test Date N N Assymetry V0
(plates) (plates∕m) (mL)
88080 7 Nov 2021 160 22,222 1.32 12.0

The ChromaWeb® is Available for Licensing

Contact us if you are interested in learning how the ChromaWeb® cassette delivers higher productivity, lower buffer consumption and seamless scale-up. Product samples with strong anion media are available for evaluation.