Welcome to the Step 1, "Embrace the Pre-packed Column Trend!" of The Bioprocess Engineer’s Guide to Chromatographic Happiness, in which we explore the dark art of column packing and evolved simplicity.

By Nicola Dickson

A great deal of chemistry, technology, and time goes into the development and manufacture of resins for bioprocess chromatography. But those resins are only as good as the columns they sit inside. And they only hit peak performance once packed inside that column like a full-capacity but orderly crowd at Twickenham Stadium (yes, I love rugby, and cricket).

Over the years, it has been fascinating to watch the shift towards more advanced resins – quickly followed by the strong desire to extract the full benefits of such expensive materials.

Contrary to the seeming simplicity of a column, chromatography column development is far from straightforward – especially when the main focus is on optimizing packing and performance. I’ve spent the best part of 30 years playing around with spanners, bolts, stainless steel, and special plastics, but there’s still work to do.

One secret to ordered packing of resin beads lies in flow distribution, which, in the case of our Evolve® process columns, is heavily influenced by the design of our flow distribution plate. Notably, the geometry of this same plate drives performance of the column during chromatography runs – in this latter case, the evenly distributed flow across the full diameter of the column allows maximum separation efficiency.

The dark art of packing and outsourced expertise

Anyone who has attempted to pack a chromatography column will have come to the conclusion that it is somewhat of a dark art – especially with more complex resins. During process development some individuals can consistently get columns to pass its testing criteria first time regardless of resin type or process variables, while others cannot. Increasingly large columns add further challenges, necessitating specialized equipment that may be infrequently used (depending on column packing needs) but nevertheless demanding space and maintenance.

As an aside, it is an unfortunate reality that the distinctly unsexy term “column packing” does a serious disservice to the complexity of the process itself – and the innovation and expertise required to achieve success.

Nevertheless, a difficult job that few people can do well – and fewer actually want to do – is a great recipe for outsourcing; enter the world of pre-packed columns and column packing services.

Moreover, the plug-and-play simplicity of a pre-packed column with its own Certificate of Analysis and Regulatory Support File makes production scheduling almost enjoyable – thanks to one less time-consuming, unpredictable task.

I suppose back in the good ol’ days, where storage real estate, sustainability, and overall cost were less of an issue, a trial and error approach to column packing or even poor chromatographic performance were better tolerated. But in the 21st century pursuit for more market share and more profit in an increasingly competitive arena, anything less than a perfectly packed column is an unnecessary risk and cost burden.

How columns evolve to meet needs

Our original Evolve® process columns were designed with several key objectives in mind; we wanted to create something that was as simple to use as possible, using the minimum number of material types, and the fewest possible number of components – all of which brought clear benefits.

For our expanding Evolve®D range, we started with these foundational principles and the solid, well proven design but, given the new plug and play remit, we could make them even simpler. Indeed, Evolve®D columns are further streamlined and refined to the end-users eye thanks to the removal of bells and whistles that no longer make sense in a multi-use, single campaign column. After all, the real complexity – the column packing – has been outsourced.

So you see, in certain scenarios, evolution appears to flow towards elegant simplicity rather than unnecessary complexity.

It’s funny to think that, when I coined the name “Evolve” many years ago (see Footnote), I didn’t fully appreciate the story of evolution that would follow.

Astrea Bioseparations: The column-packing experts

For bioprocess engineers and production managers who are keen to leave column packing behind (isn’t that all of you?), there are only a handful of pre-packed column players in town. For me, the keywords in your research should be “expertise” and “flexibility.”

I cannot (or at least should not) speak for other column purveyors, but Astrea Bioseparations will pack almost any resin to your specifications and we pride ourselves on our column-packing prowess. Astrea Bioseparations is committed to high-quality results every time thanks to hundreds of collective years of experience.

In the spirit of simplification, I’ll leave you with this:

Evolve®D: “Your Choice, Our Experts.”

If you’re a column nerd who’d like to chat about chromatography or a bioprocessing engineer who’s seeking solutions, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn!

Learn more about our column packing services

Footnote: What’s in a name?

I came up with the Evolve name many years ago – and it’s a rather clever name, if I do say so myself. It is actually an anagram of chromatographic equation terms : “ve” for elution volume, “vo” for void volume, “l” to represent column length (or bed height), and the “E” actually started life as the Greek letter epsilon to represent porosity. And that’s just part of the story! See how Evolve® got its name (and its look) in our blog.