BIA Separations is a

biotechnology Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used b ...

company focused on the production of

methacrylate Methacrylates are derivatives of methacrylic acid. * Methyl methacrylate * Ethyl methacrylate * Butyl methacrylate * Hydroxyethyl methacrylate * Glycidyl methacrylate Glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) is an ester of methacrylic acid and glycidol. Co ...

monolithic HPLC column A monolithic HPLC column, or monolithic column, is a column used in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The internal structure of the monolithic column is created in such a way that many channels form inside the column. The material i ...

s and developing industrial purification processes and analytical methods.

Company history

BIA Separations was formed in 1998 by a group of scientists in

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...

to commercialize a new

chromatographic In chemical analysis, chromatography is a laboratory technique for the separation of a mixture into its components. The mixture is dissolved in a fluid solvent (gas or liquid) called the ''mobile phase'', which carries it through a system (a ...

resin based on monolith technology. Monolithic resin was developed independently by three different laboratories in late 1980s led by Hjertén, Švec and Tennikova. The company was one of the few Slovenian companies to receive

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

funding at that time-Horizonte Venture Management realizing the potential of monoliths made the initial investment in the company. During that year, BIA Separations released its first commercial product marketed under the trade name of CIM (Convective Interaction Media). The new technique was named HPMC (High Performance Monolith Chromatography). During the 1999 and 2000s, the company promoted this new platform technology to the scientific and business community and registered several patents. In 2007 the company headquarters moved to

Villach Villach (; sl, Beljak; it, Villaco; fur, Vilac) is the seventh-largest city in Austria and the second-largest in the federal state of Carinthia. It is an important traffic junction for southern Austria and the whole Alpe-Adria region. , the po ...

, Austria. In 2011 BIA Separations entered a strategic partnership with Japan Synthetic Rubber Corporation, a Japanese company producing synthetic materials. A strategic partnership agreement with

Showa Denko , founded in 1939 by the merger of Nihon Electrical Industries and Showa Fertilizers, both established by a Japanese entrepreneur Nobuteru Mori, is a Japanese chemical company producing chemical products and industrial materials. SDK's products ...

K.K. (SDK) was signed in 2012.

Technology

CIM monoliths are made of porous methacrylate polymers composed of interconnected channels that range in size from 1-6 μm. It is these channels that account for the media separation power and flow characteristics and ability to purify large biomolecules, such as large

proteins Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...

immunoglobulin An antibody (Ab), also known as an immunoglobulin (Ig), is a large, Y-shaped protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The antibody recognizes a unique molecule of the ...

s, plasmid DNA and

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1 ...

es with their activity intact. Components to be separated are conveyed to the active groups located on the surface of the channels by

bulk flow Mass flow, also known as mass transfer and bulk flow, is the movement of fluids down a pressure or temperature gradient,Moyes & Schulte (2008). Principles of Animal Physiology. Pearson Benjamin Cummings. San Francisco, California particularly in ...

of the mobile phase. Since the channels are interconnected, there is no

diffusion Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical p ...

, no

dead end Dead End or dead end may refer to: * Dead end (street), a street connected only at one end with other streets, called by many other official names, including ''cul-de-sac''. Film and television * ''The Dead End'' (1914 film), directed by David ...

pores, no

void volume Void may refer to: Science, engineering, and technology * Void (astronomy), the spaces between galaxy filaments that contain no galaxies * Void (composites), a pore that remains unoccupied in a composite material * Void, synonym for vacuum, a s ...

and no stagnant zones to slow down the transport between the

stationary In addition to its common meaning, stationary may have the following specialized scientific meanings: Mathematics * Stationary point * Stationary process * Stationary state Meteorology * A stationary front is a weather front that is not moving ...

and

mobile phase In analytical and organic chemistry, elution is the process of extracting one material from another by washing with a solvent; as in washing of loaded ion-exchange resins to remove captured ions. In a liquid chromatography experiment, for exa ...

. Consequently, monolithic columns have flow independent resolution and binding capacity. They exhibit low back pressure, even at very high flow rates. In this way, the purification time can be significantly decreased, resulting in a pronounced reduction of the purification process costs.

Applications

Depending on the column size, CIM monolithic columns are primarily used for the purification or analysis of large biomolecules which are being used for

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

gene therapy Gene therapy is a medical field which focuses on the genetic modification of cells to produce a therapeutic effect or the treatment of disease by repairing or reconstructing defective genetic material. The first attempt at modifying human DN ...

, treatment of viral

infectious diseases An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...

and treatment of

genetic disease A genetic disorder is a health problem caused by one or more abnormalities in the genome. It can be caused by a mutation in a single gene (monogenic) or multiple genes (polygenic) or by a chromosomal abnormality. Although polygenic disorders ...

s. Some types of molecules that can be successfully purified using CIM columns are pDNA,

IgM Immunoglobulin M (IgM) is one of several isotypes of antibody (also known as immunoglobulin) that are produced by vertebrates. IgM is the largest antibody, and it is the first antibody to appear in the response to initial exposure to an antig ...

, inter-alpha inhibitors, virus like particles, and diverse viruses;

adenovirus Adenoviruses (members of the family ''Adenoviridae'') are medium-sized (90–100 nm), nonenveloped (without an outer lipid bilayer) viruses with an icosahedral nucleocapsid containing a double-stranded DNA genome. Their name derives from the ...

es,

bacteriophage A bacteriophage (), also known informally as a ''phage'' (), is a duplodnaviria virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea. The term was derived from "bacteria" and the Greek φαγεῖν ('), meaning "to devour". Bacteri ...

s, feline calicivirus,

hepatitis A Hepatitis A is an infectious disease of the liver caused by ''Hepatovirus A'' (HAV); it is a type of viral hepatitis. Many cases have few or no symptoms, especially in the young. The time between infection and symptoms, in those who develop them ...

lentivirus ''Lentivirus'' is a genus of retroviruses that cause chronic and deadly diseases characterized by long incubation periods, in humans and other mammalian species. The genus includes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. Lent ...

, influenza A and B,Industrial Platform for Virus PurificationInfluenza Virus Purification Platform
* rabies virus,Improvement of Rabies Vaccine Production Using Monolithic Chromatographic Support
/ref> rotavirus,

tomato The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word ...

and

pepino ''Solanum muricatum'' is a species of evergreen shrub native to South America and grown for its sweet edible fruit. It is known as ''pepino dulce'' ("sweet cucumber" in English, in order to differentiate it from cucumber which is also called ...

mosaic virus.

The Monolith Summer School

Since 2004, BIA Separations has organized and hosted the Monolith Summer School and Symposium (MSS) which takes place every 2 years. MSS was established as there were no dedicated conferences to this technology and to bring together the top international scientists and researchers in the area of monolith chromatography to share their experiences and innovative applications.

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

BIA Separations home page

Monolith Events
Biotechnology companies of Slovenia Slovenian companies established in 1998