Synthesis of non-porous poly(glycidylmethacrylate-co-ethylenedimethacrylate) beads and their application in separation of biopolymers

The monodisperse, 5.0 μm non-porous poly(glycidylmethacrylate-co-ethylenedimethacrylate) (PGMA/EDMA) beads were prepared by a single-step swelling and polymerization method. The seed particles prepared by dispersion polymerization exhibited good absorption of the monomer phase. Based on this media, a weak cation exchange (WCX) stationary phase for high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was synthesized by a new chemical modification method. The prepared resin has advantages of biopolymer separation, high column efficiency, low column backpressure, high protein mass recovery and good resolution for proteins. The measured bioactivity recovery for lysozyme was 97 ± 5%. The dynamic protein loading capacity of the synthesized WCX packings was 20.5 mg/g. Four proteins were completely separated in 3.0 min using the synthesized WCX stationary phase. The experimental results show that the obtained WCX resin has very weak hydrophobicity. The WCX resin was also used for the rapid separation and purification of lysozyme from egg white in 3.0 min with only one step. The purity and specific bioactivity of the purified lysozyme was found more than 95% and 70.264 IU/mg, respectively.