Performance of Filters in Medical Protein Separation System Using Superconducting Magnet

Medical proteins such as monoclonal antibodies or immunoglobulin are important as medicine for cancer and other uses. Today, we can easily sort and analyze medical proteins using various types of commercially available affinity magnetic beads. However, separation systems for these medical proteins have a very low separation rate, and the cost of the product is extremely high. We successfully developed a high gradient magnetic separation system using a cryocooler-cooled low-temperature superconducting magnet and conducted experiments on separating affinity magnetic nanobeads. Our system demonstrated very high separation efficiency and can achieve low costs with a large production rate compared to systems now used in this field. The design of a filter to trap and recover the nanobeads is important to this application. In order to achieve a filter with a high trapping ratio of magnetic beads, the parameters need to be optimized because the ratio depends on the dimensions and arrangement of the filter made of fine magnetic metal fibers. In this study, we investigated the performance of filters in the high gradient magnetic separation system. The test results show 97.8% of the magnetic nanobeads in pure water were captured, and 94.1% of the total beads were collected.