Research project
Supercritical carbon dioxide drying of proteins
Therapeutic proteins are often dried to preserve their activity and structure during storage. Freeze-drying, or lyophilization, is commonly used for this purpose, but this process is costly and time-consuming.
Alternatively, supercritical carbon dioxide drying is considered as a drying method, where carbon dioxide is applied as a cheap and biocompatible drying medium in a spray-drying system. Advantages of this method are the relatively mild operating conditions with low temperature (>31 °C) and moderate pressure (>74 bar), and the fast (single-step) process, which is capable of producing dried-protein particles. However, supercritical carbon dioxide spray drying is not an established drying method and more insight into the effect of processing parameters and protein formulation on the quality of the dried product is highly needed. The main objectives of this study are to determine effects of critical processing parameters of supercritical carbon dioxide spray drying and pharmaceutical excipients on water content, protein functionality and structure, and protein aggregation, in order to produce stable dried protein formulations.