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thirty seven
Plasma Product Biotechnology Meeting 2003
Curaçao
Netherlands Antilles
April 2226, 2003
The setting for the third international Plasma Product
Biotechnology (PPB) meeting was magnificent the island of
Curaçao in the Caribbean. A wonderful location and a hospitable
people, yet the region faces fundamental challenges with regard to
blood donation and testing.
The keynote lecture was given by Jan Over (Sanquin Blood Supply
Foundation) who described the evolution of the plasma
fractionation industry, from its start during the Second World War
with albumin and immunoglobulin, up to the development and
manufacture of today's recombinant products. And the future?
Sophisticated techniques are in use to mine plasma for new
therapeutic proteins and already some plasma-derived products
are facing strong challenges from recombinant ones. What
measures must we take to ensure safe products, free from prions
and other viruses, both known and unknown? These topics
whetted the appetite for the rest of the meeting.
New for this conference were the focus lectures, one by Neil Goss
(Further Options Pty, Ltd), Plasma Fractionation in China and South
East Asia and one by José Cruz (Pan American Health Organization)
on the Safety of Blood and Blood Components for Transfusion in
Latin America and the Caribbean. Both of these highlighted the
challenges and opportunities facing plasma fractionators in non-
western countries. In the Caribbean, there are fundamental
problems in getting all blood screened for infectious markers. In
China, the new affluence and relaxation of governmental control
has led to a consolidation of the industry, with opportunities to
develop fractionation facilities to GMP standards.
The first session discussed plasma proteomics.
Tim Hayes
(American Red Cross) presented the role of mass spectroscopy,
Steve Burton (Prometic Biosciences) introduced ligands and ligand
libraries for plasma proteome fractionation, while Judith Tait
Lathrop described a novel technology which, based on function,
allows identification of potential therapeutics.
Pathogen and prion safety followed.
Techniques to assure safety
include heat, virus filtration, and virus inactivation methods.
Hannelore Willkommen (Clearant GmbH) concluded that more
knowledge about the properties of B19 to heat treatment is
needed, while Herb Lutz (Millipore Corp) described a filtration step
for removing parvovirus from an IgG process. Virus inactivation
was taken up by Klaus Kaiser (Bayer Technology Services) who
introduced a new type of reactor for virus inactivation with
ultraviolet irradiation. H. Tran (Clearant Inc) described a new,
nucleic acid testing method for validating virus inactivation using
a small target amplicon.
A session always to look forward to is that of new developments
and technologies.
Presentations here covered the GradiflowTM
technology for purifying human IgG, Rob Stewert (Gradipore);
scaling up the purification of clotting factors VIII and IX on
monolithic supports, Djuro Josic (Octopharma Pharmazeutika
ProduktionsgesmbH); and disposable ion exchange membranes for
purifying IgG from crude feedstock, Peter Gomme (CSL Ltd). On
behalf of James Robl (Hematech) session chairman Chris Bryant
(Aventis Behring) presented the work done towards developing a
system for production of therapeutic human polyclonal antibodies.
The human artificial chromosome vector was introduced into
bovine primary fetal fibroblasts, which were then used to produce
transchromosomic calves by embryo cloning. Antigen specific
human antibody was produced in response to immunization.
Meeting
report
