Separation of Monoclonal Antibodies from Cell-Culture Supernatants and Ascites Fluid Using Thiophilic Agarose

Thiophilic adsorption chromatography was first introduced by Porath and Belew (1 ) and was described as a one-step method for purification of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) (2 ). As such, the method seems very attractive. Moreover, it operates with lyotropic salts, which are most agreeable reagents to proteins and in particular to immunoglobulins, and indeed thiophilic adsorption chromatography is becoming recognized as a gentle and useful general tool for fractionation of proteins (3 ).