Design and Trial Production of Magnetic Filter for Medical Protein Screening System using High Gradient Magnetic Separation

Biomedicine is indispensable for the treatment of various diseases such as cancer and diabetes mellitus. In particular, antibodies utilized by the immune system are believed to represent the future of medical supplies as they offer an effective treatment for diseases with minor side effects. The development of antibody drugs requires a large-scale, sequential, fast separation, and refinement process for the medical proteins. Thus, in the previous study, we proposed a medical protein screening system that is based on high-gradient magnetic separation using a superconducting magnet. In the proposed system, the protein is specifically attached to the magnetic beads and captured by the magnetic force around a magnetic filter generated by a high magnetic field. In this paper, the behaviour of the magnetic beads was investigated using particle trace simulation coupled with electromagnetic and fluid analyses for three types of commercially available magnetic filters. Simulations were performed using the filter stack intervals and number of filters as design parameters. Finally, we designed the suitable filter for capturing the magnetic beads. (paper)