Andrew Zydney, Ph.D.

Nucleic acid technology came of age during COVID-19 with biopharma firms developing, testing, mass producing, and shipping mRNA vaccines in record time. However, as the pandemic ebbs, the industry now needs to find ways of making DNA and RNA products more efficiently.

This is the view presented in a new study by scientists at Penn State who looked at purification methods used in nucleic acid manufacturing and found room for improvement.

A big problem is the fact that current chromatography and membrane separation techniques were developed with proteins in mind, says co-author Andrew Zydney, PhD, the Bayard D. Kunkle Chair and professor of chemical engineering at Penn State College of Engineering… Continue reading.

Single pass tangential flow filtration (SPTFF) is relatively straightforward to apply in bioprocessing, but it can be difficult to design and size the SPTFF module for a given application since the filtrate flux and degree of concentration that can be achieved in a single pass is highly dependent on the properties of the protein, buffer conditions, and feed flow rate, according to Andrew Zydney, PhD, director of the membrane science, engineering and technology (MAST) Center at Pennsylvania State University.

“The design of SPTFF processes has thus been largely empirical, requiring significant experimental investigation,” he says, pointing out that it’s still worth taking on these challenges of applying SPTFF in bioprocessing… Continue reading.

Scientists have developed a new technique for purifying proteins during antibody manufacturing. The aim is to reduce the cost of continuous manufacturing for large-scale applications, such as COVID-19 therapeutics or Alzheimer’s disease treatments, without the need for Protein A.

“Protein A chromatography is robust and works well, but it’s also expensive and can create significant supply chain problems because you have to produce the Protein A and immobilize it on a resin,” says Andrew Zydney, PhD, professor of chemical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. “Our hope is that, by moving away from Protein A, we open up opportunities that are higher throughput and lower cost… Continue reading.

The Division of Biochemical Technology of the American Chemical Society (ACS) has named Andrew Zydney, Bayard D. Kunkle Chair and professor of chemical engineering at Penn State, as the 2019 recipient of the Alan S. Michaels Award in the Recovery of Biological Products. The award recognizes outstanding research and practice contributions in the field of the recovery of biological products, which refers to the process of purifying vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals as part of downstream bioprocessing. Zydney will receive the award at the ACS National Meeting, set for March 31 to April 4, 2019, in Orlando, Florida.

Zydney is receiving the award based on his lifetime contributions to a field that has high importance for human health care. When a biologically derived drug is developed for treating cancer, immune disorders, and other diseases, it is made from genetically engineered mammalian cells that are specifically designed to produce complex biomolecules that attack the disease in various ways, depending on the disease type. They also need to be highly purified because they are injectable drugs that bypass most of the natural protections against foreign proteins, microorganisms, and viruses… Continue reading.