findings were to secure reasonable timelines and be more realistic in terms of the required budget even early on in the basic design of the new plant.
Friederike Sander from Knauer in Germany and CSL Behring in Australia made a joint presentation in the session focusing on New Products & Innovations. Their presentations focussed on how the Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) technology could be utilized to purify albumin from human plasma.
Results about how DNA aptamers could be used as affinity ligands in chromatography to selectively bind and elute FVII from different feed streams were presented by Gerald Perret from LFB.
From Cytiva a solvent free precipitation process based on a system of acrylic acid was presented by James Van Alstine. The alternative precipitation approach may be able to improve on cost, safety and ecological aspects as compared to the more classical Cohn process which require large quantities of ethanol.
In conclusion the meeting offered a good and stimulating mix of industrial and academic presentations focusing on some of the main challenges and possibilities for the future such as new treatments of Alzheimer’s disease., That wasa hot topic also at the meeting in 2010. , At that meeting it was IVIG treatment and at this meeting, treating patients with albumin (presentation by Grifols). Both approaches still seem to need more time before they have matured into a more general approach.
In a survey, 60% of the attendees rated the eighth PPB meeting as excellent. They highlighted the networking opportunities and the high quality scope for the different sessions. Among responders, 100% wanted to have a PPB meeting in 2015 so the search for another island to host the meeting has already been initiated by the organizers.