Our approach solves new and diverse separation challenges by:
Moving away from one-shoe-fit-all and piecemeal solutions.
Offering groundbreaking capabilities integrated across:
Sample sizes (limited to large volumes).
Workflows (initial sample preparation to final purification).
There is an increasing demand for products and services to maintain our standard of living and quality of life. For example, the biopharmaceutical industry is facing increased demand for affordable biopharmaceuticals. Thus, new and improved performance capabilities are required to improve the production of existing medicines and develop new therapeutics (e.g., CAR-T CRISPR, RNA therapeutics) and tools for next-generation R&D (e.g., single-cell multi-omics).
Furthermore, significant unmet needs exist for the extraction, separation, filtration, and purification of valuable products or resources in non-pharmaceutical industries that currently use energy-intensive thermal separations (e.g., lithium extraction and radioisotope isolation).
We are developing products and solutions that:
Improve the production of existing medicines and accelerate new therapeutics.
Advance biotools for next-generation R&D.
Solve challenges across non-pharmaceutical industries.
Improve the production of existing medicines and accelerate new therapeutics
Six out of ten top-selling drugs are large molecule biologics, such as peptides, monoclonal antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, and vaccines [1]. Newer therapeutics such as CAR-T, CRISPR, and RNA therapeutics are pushing the frontiers of medicine.
These advancements in biologics do not mean that small molecules are losing their relevance [2]. Nine out of ten drugs sold are still small molecule drugs. There is renewed interest in the design of small-molecule drugs for hard-to-treat diseases.
Small molecule and biologics manufacturing requires chromatography technologies that can:
Handle process streams with high titers.
Are durable at acidic and alkaline pH and increased temperature conditions.
Increase productivity through higher binding capacity faster processing times, and smaller footprint.
Involve single‐use devices to reduce costs.
The challenges of current chromatography resins to meet these requirements are:
Expensive
Lower durability when exposed to changes in pH and temperature.
Relatively low surface area and suboptimal Functionalization (ion exchange, affinity ligands) limits maximum binding capacity.
Analytes require long residence times on the resins.
High energy use for clean‐in‐place (CIP) procedures.
Large buffer and footprint requirements
We are developing chromatography resins, monoliths, and membranes that address these challenges.
Biotools for next-generation R&D
Limited volume (microliters down sub nanoliters) complex biological sample processing is routine in the growing fields of genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics.
Proteomics unserved or grossly underserved.
Sample processing a crucial cog in this field due to:
The complexity of the proteome.
The dynamic concentration range of proteins.
The absence of PCR-like amplification techniques make.
We work on products and solutions that allow massively parallel processing of small volumes (sub-nanomolar) and large amounts of Crude Samples, followed by chromatography separation.
Solve challenges across non-pharmaceutical industries.
There is a need for separation media that are suitable for the isolation of compounds in non-pharmaceutical industries that currently use energy-intensive thermal separations.
For example, the global demand for lithium is soaring. This element is a key component of rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, energy storage, and consumer electronics. Traditional methods for extracting lithium involve mining it from mineral deposits. Lithium is also present in certain brine fields. Thus, this brine is pumped to evaporation ponds to concentrate the lithium.
These approaches:
Take time.
Are land-intensive.
Have adverse environmental impact.
Direct lithium extraction is considered game-changing and more sustainable. However, there is a significant unmet need to increase lithium recovery using direct lithium extraction during battery recycling and brine ponds from 40%-60% to 70%-90% or more.
The lower percentages are due to the low selectivity of current methods. These inefficiencies have also led to increased downstream use of energy, water, and other resources. Consequently, more waste is generated, capital and operating are higher, and environmental remediation is suboptimal.
We are developing highly selective separation media and monoliths that avoid these suboptimal outcomes.
References
Favour Danladi Makurvet, Biologics vs. small molecules: Drug costs and patient access, Medicine in Drug Discovery, 2021.
Laura Howes, Is this a golden age of small-molecule drug discovery?, Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), 2023.
Jakub Faktor, David R. Goodlett and Irena Dapic, Trends in Sample Preparation for Proteome Analysis, Mass Spectrometry in Life Sciences and Clinical Laboratory, 2020.
This blog is part of our broader impact series, which provides an easy-to-understand overview of the implications of our technology and products on science, sustainability, and human health.
For more information or to request samples, please email us at inquiry@millennialscientific.com, call us at 855 388 2800, or fill in our online form.
Comentarios