Improvement to the Safety of Hydrazide-Activated Magnetic Agarose Production

This project focused on improving the safety of the manufacturing operator while generating hydrazide-activated magnetic agarose, a product that currently uses anhydrous hydrazine in an organic solvent system to yield product. The objective of the project was to validate an alternative chemical system that utilizes aqueous reagents in an aqueous reaction system to mitigate potential safety hazards associated with anhydrous reagents and organic solvent exposure. Work was performed to validate the use of hydrazine hydrate, dispersed in water, to activate magnetic agarose, a form of agarose resin that demonstrates magnetic characteristics. The project successfully established that hydrazine hydrate in an aqueous reaction system yields product that is equivalent to historical production batches, and that can effectively couple with a ligand necessary for production of a downstream magnetic bead product that has applications in affinity chromatography.