Sartorius Stedim Biotech (SSB), a leading international supplier for the biopharmaceutical industry, has extended its product line of small-scale Sartocon® Slice 50 crossflow devices by Slice 50 ECO. This new crossflow filter has been specially designed for water-based protein solutions with viscosities below 3 cp. The crossflow cassette can typically be used in biotech applications, such as filtration of IgG, blood factors and peptides, especially involving membrane screening and small-volume process development. The reduced flow channel geometry of Sartocon® Slice 50 ECO lowers the recirculation pump requirements by as much as 50% versus a standard design. Only half of the pump energy is needed, considerably decreasing the sheer stress on all protein solutions.
Like the standard Slice 50 cassette, Sartocon® Slice 50 ECO is offered as an encapsulated and ready-to-use crossflow module. Offered in a wide selection of molecular weight cutoffs, it has a filter area of 50 cm2. The cGMP-validated self-contained filtration unit eliminates the need for a compression holder and is available in a choice of two polymers: The first polymer, a stable polyethersulfone membrane (PESU) that is well established in the biopharmaceutical industry is ideal for a broad pH and temperature range. The second polymer, the Hydrosart® membrane, is a stable, cross-linked regenerated “cellulosic” polymer. It is also suitable for a broad pH range and can be cleaned and depyrogenated using up to 1 N NaOH at elevated temperatures. This membrane is extremely hydrophilic, making it non- protein-binding and virtually non-fouling. It is very easy to clean and delivers an exceptionally high product flux and product yield.
“With our new product, we are offering the industry a high-performance device for especially efficient filtration of low-volume aqueous protein solutions. Due to its features, such as low feed flow and low adsorption, Sartocon 50 ECO is a very cost-effective solution,” stated Frank Meyeroltmanns, expert for crossflow filtration at Sartorius Stedim Biotech.
Major benefits of the Sartocon® Slice 50 cassette are its scalability and identical materials of construction. These properties ease transfer of process development results to the next scale up level. In addition, the new filter device can be readily interfaced with SSB’s benchtop crossflow system SARTOFLOW® Smart and with many other laboratory-scale filtration systems.