In gene therapy, viral vectors are used to deliver genetic material, with rAAV being among the most commonly employed. To improve their properties, such as tropism and transduction efficiency, new variants of rAAV capsids are continuously being developed through genetic engineering for therapeutic applications. A key objective is to achieve a high proportion of full rAAV vectors containing therapeutic genes, which is strongly influenced by the optimization of conditions during the upstream processing steps. In order to facilitate monitoring and selection of the most optimal rAAV serotype and parameters during the upstream processes, there is a need to develop a fast, simple and cost-effective protocol for the purification of viral vectors on a small scale, which would have the possibility of automation and subsequent transition to an industrial level. In the master's thesis, we studied the different steps of the protocol for the isolation of serotypes rAAV2, rAAV8, rAAV9. We determined the proportion required for acidification of HEK 293 cell lysate, defined the elution volume of the virus and determined the capacity or volume of sample loading on the monolithic carrier and tested different pre-treatments of HEK 293 lysates during the preparation processes. Two different elution conditions, pH and pH-NaCl gradient, were studied to improve rAAV binding to monolithic carriers and reduce the amount of impurities in the elution fractions. After each step in the protocol development process, we analyzed the product quantity and purity of the samples using different analytical methods: PATfix, mass photometry, BCA, Picogreen and SDS-PAGE. The rAAV isolation protocol from HEK 293 cell culture lysates proved to be more robust when a pH-NaCl gradient was used as the elution condition, as it successfully purified lysates of all rAAV serotypes used on a CIM® SO3 0.2 mL monolithic 96-well plate. With both elution conditions, we were able to determine the proportions of full rAAV capsids using mass photometry, which requires a certain degree of purity and concentration of viruses.
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