Asst Prof CHEN Wenqian

Research interests: Protein/peptide purification and formulation

More than 10 biosimilars* have been approved globally since 2013 to compete with the block-buster monoclonal-antibody-based products (e.g. rituximab that had $ 7.8 billion global sale in 2017). Together with the strong growth of biological products and expiry of their patents, the development of biosimilars will continue to grow strong over the next few decades and this creates a huge demand for the formulation and purification technologies of proteins and peptides.

In terms of formulation, the crystallisation process for proteins and peptides are controlled and optimised to obtain crystals with the desired size and shape distributions, and the crystals can be further processed physically and chemically to achieve enhanced stability and controllable dissolution rate.

In terms of purification, nanomaterials (e.g. silica-based, metallic and polymeric) are designed to achieve selective favourable interactions with the target proteins and peptides against impurities produced during the synthesis stage, which subsequently lead to enhanced crystallisation of the target proteins and peptides.

*Biosimilars are biological products that are highly similar to and has no clinically meaningful differences from existing FDA-approved reference products.