Porous Platform Inks for Fast and High‐Resolution 3D Printing of Stationary Phases for Downstream Processing

Abstract

AbstractPurifications of biologics can be improved using 3D printed stationary phases with perfectly ordered morphology. However, limited spatial resolution and lack of porous materials have hindered application of additive manufacturing in bioprocessing. To bridge this gap, digital light processing and polymerization‐induced phase separation are combined to fabricate platform materials with bed morphology at the micrometer scale, and porous network in the nanometer scale. Four different porous inks are developed, 3D printed, and characterized in terms of their rheological behaviour, polymerization kinetics, and printing resolution. Rapid 3D printing (down to 1 h) is achieved at scale (up to 100 mL column) of porous supports (50% porosity) at high resolution (up to 50 µm for linear features and 200 µm for complex geometries). 3D‐printed gyroids are chemically functionalized with various ion exchange ligands. These are successfully challenged for i) the separation of model proteins in dynamic conditions and ii) protein capture from a clarified cell harvest, demonstrating dynamic binding capacities between 5 and 16 mg mL−1 and up to 86% purity in a single run. This work introduces a rapid and facile approach to 3D printing porous inks to fabricate perfectly ordered stationary phases for downstream processing.