Preparation of polysaccharide beads
AssigneeGE Healthcare Bio-Sciences AB
InventorsGuang-Hui Ma, Zhi-Guo Su, Qing-Zhu Zhou
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present invention relates a method of preparing agarose beads, which method results in a population of beads which are of relatively uniform particle size. In an advantageous embodiment, the beads are of a particle size less than 10 μm, and the coefficient of variation C.V. of the population is less than 15%. The beads according to the invention are advantageously used in biological separation methods, such as in the production of chromatographic packing materials; drug carriers; or in any method of biological engineering.
Claims9
A method of preparing agarose gel beads, which method comprises the following steps:
- (a) providing an agarose aqueous phase W comprising agarose;
- (b) providing a water-immiscible oil phase O, in which at least one emulsifier is dissolved;
- (c) mixing the water phase W and oil phase O to obtain a W/O emulsion;
- (d) passing the emulsion through a hydrophobic microporous membrane by applying pressure to obtain a W/O emulsion with substantially uniform droplet size;
- and
- (e) reducing the temperature of the W/O emulsion droplets until agarose gel beads are formed.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.