Viral contamination of biotechnological products is a serious challenge for production of therapeutic proteins and vaccines. Because of the small size, virus removal is a non-trivial task, and, therefore, inexpensive and robust virus removal filters are highly demanded. Synthetic polymer based virus removal filters are expensive because they are produced through tedious multistep phase-inversion processing involving hazardous solvents and rigorous pore annealing processing. Cermaic based virus removal filters are heavy, hard to regenerate (or to dispose), and thus impractical. Cellulose is one of the most common materials to produce various types of filters because it is inexpensive, disposable, inert, non-toxic, mechanically strong, hydrophyllic, stable in a wide range of pH, and withstanding sterilization e.g. by autoclaving. Normal paper filter, used for chemistry, has too large pores to remove viruses. A nanocellulose based paper filter is designed which is capable of removing virus particles with the efficiency matching that of the best industrial virus filters[1]. The reported paper filter, which is manufactured according to the traditional paper making processes, consists of 100% high purity cellulose nanofibers directly derived from nature. The main mechanism of virus removal is size exclusion rather than interception of viruses via electrostatic interactions, which are sensitive to pH and salt concentrations. The filtration properties of the membrane have been verified using controlled size polystyrene latex beads tagged with fluorophore groups (Figure 1) and swine influenza virus (SIV) particles.<br/><br/>Reference:<br/><br/>[1]. Metreveli, G., Wågberg, L., Emmoth, E., Belak, S., Strømme, M., Mihranyan, A. (2014). Size-exclusion nanocellulose filter paper for virus removal, Advanced Healthcare Materials, 3(10): 1546-1550

Size exclusion nanocellulose based paper filter for virus removal

249th National Meeting (2015)

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