Sara Rosa

PhD Student


Background

M.Sc. in Biotechnology, IST, 2012
Graduation in Chemical and Biological Engineering, ISEL, 2010


Research Activities

My interests rely on the optimization and the scale-up of the production of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) by mammalian cell technology and their purification using an integrated and innovative downstream process (DSP).
I’m now focused on the production of mAbs against interleukin (IL)-8 by Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell culture by adapting cells to grow in serum-free media and in dynamic systems. DSP will be based on clarification (cell harvest) by extraction using aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS), and further purification by chromatography using convective flow adsorbes (monoliths, membranes and fibres) and/or expanded bed adsorption using affinity and multimodal ligands.
Those tests are important to perform in order to develop an alternative capture step for the purification of mAbs that allows the integration of up and downstream processes. By achieving this, it is expected to: i) significantly shorten process development times, ii) increase the production capacity currently available and, especially, iii) reduce the cost of mAbs.

 

Selected Publications

dos Santos, R.*, Rosa, S.A.S.L.*, Aires-Barros, M.R., Tover, A., Azevedo, A.M., 2014. Phenylboronic acid as a multi-modal ligand for the capture of monoclonal antibodies: Development and optimization of a washing step. Journal of Chromatography A 1355, 115-124. *The authors contributed equally. (DOI: 10.1016/j.chroma.2014.06.001)

 

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