Clarification of Mammalian Cell Culture Feed Streams Using Polydiallyldimethylammonium Chloride Flocculation in Conjunction With Clarisolve Depth Filters

            The push for disposable technologies, coupled with increasingly higher cell culture densities, has placed a challenge on traditional solid liquid separation technologies.  To address this problem, the use of flocculation technologies has been utilized to enhance the clarification throughput and downstream filtration operations.  However these very flocculants present unique challenges on downstream purification steps as well as the issue of quantifying residual levels of polymer across major unit operations of downstream purification.  In this work EMD Millipore has demonstrated the application of cationic flocculent, Polydiallyldimethylammonium chloride (pDADMAC), as an effective pretreatment method for mammalian cell culture harvest.  The effects on depth filtration, downstream purification, polymer toxicity and residual quantification will be discussed.