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The preparation and characterization of mixed-mode adsorbents for a typical separation purpose are of great importance in bioseparation areas. In this work, we prepared a new monolithic cryogel with a combination of ion-exchange and hydrophobic functions by employing benzyl-quaternary amine groups. The fundamental cryogel properties, protein equilibrium adsorption isotherm and chromatographic adsorption in the cryogel were measured experimentally. The results showed that, by using bovine serum album as the model protein, the dual functional cryogel has protein binding capability even in salt solution and the buffer with pH close or below the protein isoelectric point due to both the electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions. A capillary-based adsorption model was developed, which provided satisfied insights of the microstructure, axial dispersion, mass transfer as well as protein adsorption characteristics within the cryogel bed. The chromatographic isolation of bioactive proteins from rabbit blood serum was carried out by the cryogel. Immunoglobulin G antibody with a purity of 98.2% and albumin with a purity of 96.8% were obtained, indicating that the cryogel could be an interesting and promising adsorbent in bioseparation areas., (Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Polymeric cryogels are sponge-like materials with supermacroporous structure, allowing them to be of interest as new chromatographic supports, cell scaffolds and drug carriers in biological and biomedical areas. The matrices of cryogels are always prepared in the form of monoliths by cryo-polymerization under frozen conditions. However, there are limited investigations on the production of cryogels in the form of adsorbent beads suitable for bioseparation. In this work, we provide a new approach by combining the microchannel liquid-flow focusing with cryo-polymerization for the preparation of polyacrylamide-based supermacroporous cryogel beads with a narrow particle size distribution. The present method was achieved by introducing the aqueous phase solution containing monomer, cross-linker and redox initiators, and the water-immiscible organic oil phase containing surfactant simultaneously into a microchannel with a cross-shaped junction, where the aqueous drops with uniform sizes were generated by the liquid shearing and the segmentation due to the steady flow focusing of the immiscible phase streams. These liquid drops were in situ suspended into the freezing bulk oil phase for cryo-polymerization and the cryogel matrix beads were obtained by thawing after the achievement of polymerization. By grafting the polymer chains containing sulfo binding groups onto these matrix beads, the cation-exchange cryogel beads for protein separation were produced. The results showed that at the aqueous phase velocities from 0.5 to 2.0 cm/s and the total velocities of the water-immiscible phase from 2.0 to 6.0 cm/s, the obtained cryogel beads by the present method have narrow size distributions with most of the bead diameters in the range from 800 to 1500 μm with supermacropores in sizes of about 3-50 μm. These beads also have high porosities with the averaged maximum porosity of 96.9% and the mean effective porosity of 86.2%, which are close to those of the polyacrylamide-based cryogel monoliths. The packed bed using the cryogel beads with mean diameter of 1248 μm, as an example, has reasonable and acceptable liquid dispersion, but high water permeability (4.29 × 10⁻¹⁰ m²) and high bed voidage (90.2%) owing to the supermacropores within the beads, enhanced the rapid binding and separation of protein from the feedstock even at high flow velocities. The purity of the obtained lysozyme from chicken egg white by one-step chromatography using the packed bed was in the range of about 78-92% at the flow velocities of 0.5-15 cm/min, indicating that the present cryogel beads could be an effective chromatographic adsorbent for primary bioseparation., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is an important high-energy compound widely used in biological and therapeutic fields. It can be produced by phosphorylation of adenosine monophosphate (AMP) with microbial cells in industrial scale and the effective isolation of ATP from microbial fermentation broth is a challenging work. In this work, we develop a novel one-step method to directly separate ATP from fermentation broth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae by anion-exchange chromatography using supermacroporous cryogel. The cryogel bed with tertiary amine groups was prepared by grafting N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) monomer chains onto the matrix of a polyacrylamide-based cryogel in a glass column and its properties of liquid dispersion, water permeability, porosity as well as the ligand density were measured. Chromatographic separation of ATP from the fermentation broth by the cryogel was carried out using deionised water and 0.01 M HCl as running buffer, respectively. The breakthrough characteristics and elution performance in the cryogel bed were revealed and analyzed. The purities of the obtained ATP were analyzed quantitatively by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The maximal purity of ATP by the one-step separation method was 95.5% using 0.01 M HCl as running buffer in this work. The corresponding chromatographic behaviors were investigated and analyzed.

Graft polymerization of monomer chains with expected functional groups onto the matrix pore surfaces by initiator is an effective approach for introducing ion-exchange groups to cryogel matrix to get anion- or cation-exchange supermacroporous cryogels. In this work, a novel cation-exchange cryogel with sulfo binding groups was prepared by grafting of 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid (AMPSA) onto polyacrylamide-based cryogels in glass columns. The grafting polymerization was achieved in an in-situ manner which was performed by pumping the initiator and the reactive solution of graft monomer with sulfo binding groups directly through a cryogel bed pre-produced in a glass column under frozen condition. The axial liquid dispersion characteristics within the monolithic cryogel beds before and after the in-situ polymerization were compared by measuring residence time distributions (RTDs) at various liquid flow rates using tracer pulse-response method. Microstructure morphology of pores within cryogels was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Chromatography of lysozyme was carried out to reveal the protein breakthrough and elution characteristics in the obtained cryogel beds.

A novel continuous supermacroporous monolithic cryogel embedded with nanometer-size particles was prepared by the radical cryogenic co-polymerization of acrylamide (AAm), N,N'-methylene-bis-acrylamide (MBAAm), allyl glycidyl ether (AGE) and the dispersed surfactant-stabilized Fe3O4 nanoparticles under the freezing-temperature variation condition in a glass column. This special separation matrix has interconnected supermacropores with pore size of 10-50 microm, which permit the free-passage of microbial cells or cell debris in the culture fluids and then is interest in downstream processes. The axial liquid dispersion coefficients of the new continuous supermacroporous monolithic bed at different liquid flow rates were obtained by measuring residence time distributions (RTDs) using tracer pulse-response method. The experimental results showed that the axial liquid dispersion within the bed was weak in a wide water flow rate of 0.5-15 cm/min. The axial dispersion coefficient was found to be increased exponentially with the increase of liquid flow rate. Chromatographic process of bovine serum albumin (BSA) in the cryogel monolithic bed was carried out to reveal the protein breakthrough and elution characteristics. Compared with other reported cryogel beds in literature, the protein adsorption capacity of the present cryogel bed was improved due to the embedded nano-sized solid adsorbents in the gel matrix. Microstructure morphology of the embedded nanoparticles in the cryogel and the gel matrix structure were also analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in this paper.