AFFFF-MALS for Mempro™ Virus-like Particles (VLPs) Characterization

Creative Biostructure has established an advanced and comprehensive virus-like particles (VLPs) platform based on our Mempro™ Membrane Protein platform. Creative Biostructure can provide custom VLPs as important biomolecular nanoparticles in order to faciliate lipoparticle technology, delivery systems and drug therapy development. Mempro™ Virus-like Particles platform has a wide range of application fields, especially in vaccine development.

We are capable of increasing the safety of the VLP-based vaccines while decreasing the cost of these virus-like particle products. Creative Biostructure is focused on the development of advanced measurement methods to detect the size, integrity, stability, and aggregation state of the VLPs, and AFFFF-MALS (asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation with multi-angle light scattering detection) is one of the advanced techniques we can offer.

Figure 1. AFFFF-MALS analysis to determine VLP size distributions to explain how modification of MPV VLPs affects their particle size distributions. (Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 2009)  

AFFFF is a technique to separate hydrated particles based on their size. For this method, the detection range is considered from 1 nm to 100 um. It is usually to use UV at 280nm for a standard detection, but we can couple AFFFF with a MALS detector to further increase the selectivity.

Creative Biostructure has successfully applied AFFFF-MALS to various virus-like particles for size measurement.The principle of this technique can be briefly described as follows: injecting the hydrated virus-like particles into a separation channel, spreading the virus-like particles along the width of the channel by entering fluid, and eluting the particles with laminar flow across the channel. These steps allow to elute the small particles before large particles into the laminar flow channel. The remaining large particles are eluted by stopping the cross-flow in order to releasing them into the laminar flow channel. In consideration of the similarity between AFFF-MALS and the EM-based method, we can envisage AFFFF-MALS technique as a economic and reliable tool to characterize the content of total particles in virus-like particle preparations.

Besides AFFF-MALS measurement, Creative Biostructure can also provide various Mempro™ Virus-like Particles (VLPs) Characterization services, such as Electrospray differential mobility analysis (ES-DMA), Dynamic light scattering (DLS), ELISA, Western blot, Electron microscopy (TEM), LC-MS, Enzymatic NA activity assay, Surface Plasmon Resonance Immunoassay (SPR), RP-HPLC, etc. Please feel free to contact us for a detailed quote.

References:
C. M. Thompson, et al. (2013). Analytical technologies for influenza virus-like particle candidate vaccines: challenges and emerging approaches. Virology Journal,10: 141.
S. J. Kaczmarczyk, et al. (2009). Quantitative Characterization of Virus-like Particles by Asymmetrical Flow Field Flow Fractionation, Electrospray Differential Mobility Analysis, and Transmission Electron Microscopy. Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 102(3): 845–855.
Y. P. Chuan. et al. (2008). Quantitative analysis of virus-like particle size and distribution by field-flow fractionation. Biotechnology and Bioengineering. 99(6):1425–1433.