Bio-Rad’s Profinia Protein Purification System Offers Reliability and Time Savings

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., a multinational manufacturer and distributor of life science research and clinical diagnostic products, today announced the availability of a technical note (bulletin 5514A) that compares Bio-Rad’s Profinia™ protein purification system with the ÄKTAprime system™ from GE Healthcare, for the purification and desalting of His-tagged proteins.

Like the Profinia system, the ÄKTAprime system offers preprogrammed methods,pre-formulated buffers, and chromatography cartridges. The comparison was focused on ease-of use, reliability, and overall performance of the two systems.

The Profinia system is fully automated and requires no user handling or intervention between application of sample, affinity purification, and desalting of the purified protein. In addition, Profinia IMAC purification reagents, including solutions and cartridges, require no advanced preparation, while the ÄKTAprime HisTrap reagent kits provide buffer concentrates that must be formulated and diluted by the user.

While protein yields and purities generated by both systems were nearly equivalent, the Profinia system proved superior in terms of the total time required for purification. The Profinia system also saved over one hour from each affinity purification (or five hours over the course of five repetitive runs), offering a significant time savings advantage when multiple purifications must be performed in a single day.

Not discussed in the bulletin was the difference between the desalting steps of the two instruments. The Profinia purification system has tandem affinity purification and desalting that simplified the purification and provided ready-to-use protein while the AKTAprime system needs a separate desalting step adding another manual operation step. In addition, the Profinia system's design for buffer display and cartridge installation is more user-friendly and easy to operate.