Patent ID: 7553938

Claim:
A method of preparing a purified, virus inactivated and virus safe antibody preparation from a starting solution comprising antibodies and contaminants, the method comprising the steps of: (a) adjusting the pH of the starting solution to 4.8 to 4.95, to produce an intermediate solution; (b) adding caprylate and/or heptanoate ions to the intermediate solution and maintaining the pH at 4.8 to 4.95, whereby a precipitate is formed and the antibodies are essentially present in a supernatant; (c) incubating the supernatant under conditions of caprylate and/or heptanoate ion concentration, time, pH and temperature to form a second precipitate and filtering to form a filtered solution; (d) applying the filtered solution to a first chromatographic column filled with a first anion exchange resin at a pH from about 5.0 to about 5.2 to perform a first anion-exchange chromatography under conditions that allow binding of contaminants to the resin while not allowing significant binding of the antibodies to the resin, wherein a purified, virus inactivated and virus safe antibody preparation is produced as flow-through.