Microfluidic Cartridge for Bead-Based Affinity Assays

Abstract

Within the vast field of medical biotechnology, the biopharmaceutical industry is particularly fast-growing and highly competitive, so reducing time and costs associated to process optimization becomes instrumental to ensure speed to market and, consequently, profitability. The manufacturing of biopharmaceutical products, namely, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), relies mostly on mammalian cell culture processes, which are highly dynamic and, consequently, difficult to optimize. In this context, there is currently an unmet need of analytical methods that can be integrated at-line in a bioreactor, for systematic monitoring and quantification of key metabolites and proteins. Microfluidic-based assays have been extensively and successfully applied in the field of molecular diagnostics; however, this technology remains largely unexplored for Process Analytical Technology (PAT), despite holding great potential for the at-line measurement of different analytes in bioreactor processes, combining low reagent/molecule consumption with assay sensitivity and rapid turnaround times.Here, the fabrication and handling of a microfluidic cartridge for protein quantification using bead-based affinity assays is described. The device allows geometrical multiplexed immunodetection of specific protein analytes directly from bioreactor samples within 2.5 h and minimal hands-on time. As a proof-of-concept, quantification of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) host cell proteins (HCP) as key impurities, IgG as product of interest, and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) as cell viability marker was demonstrated with limits of detection (LoD) in the low ng/mL range. Negligible matrix interference and no cross-reactivity between the different immunoassays on chip were found. The results highlight the potential of the miniaturized analytical method for PAT at reduced cost and complexity in comparison with sophisticated instruments that are currently the state-of-the-art in this context.

Keywords: Biopharmaceuticals; Colorimetry; Immunoassays; Microfluidics; Monoclonal antibodies; Multiplexing; Process analytical technology.