CIM® TECHNOLOGY > CIM® monolith technology features and benefits

CIM® Advantages for Large Proteins, DNA and Viruses:




As demonstrated above, CIM® monolithic supports combine the advantages of conventional chromatographic columns packed with porous particles in terms of separation power, capacity and sample distribution and those of membrane technology in terms of convective mass transport. In comparison with these two support types, CIM Convective Interaction Media® chromatographic supports have many benefits, especially for purification of large biomolecules:

  1. Extremely fast Separations on CIM® are a consequence of high flow rates at low backpressures. This is why CIM® monolithic supports will provide dramatic time savings in your laboratory. If you are looking for a support that enables fast lab scale separations and purifications, CIM® Disk Monolithic Columns should be your first choice. They can separate your molecules in a few seconds only!

  2. High binding Capacity, Recovery and Resolution power are CIM® monoliths’ hallmark. And to top that, all of these characteristics are practically flow independent! Also, CIM® supports exhibit low nonspecific binding of biomolecules, resulting in excellent recoveries. Capacities of CIM® for virus are in the range of 1011-1014 vp/ml of support, 13 mg/ml support for pDNA and 25 mg/ml support for HSA. Capacity for IgG is in the range of  15 mg/ml of support.

  3. Handling, Scaling up and Compatibility: simplicity itself! Using CIM® monolithic supports is very simple: just place the CIM® Disk in the housing and the disk monolithic column is ready for use!(MPG 221KB). Larger CIM® Tube Monolithic Columns are shipped as ready-to-use. CIM® columns have been designed to be compatible with any peristaltic pump or conventional high-pressure chromatography LC/HPLC equipment as they contain standard VALCO-type connectors. All CIM® Disks have the same dimensions, so they fit in the same housing and are therefore interchangeable. By exchanging different CIM® Disks in the same housing, various CIM® Disk Monolithic Columns can be easily prepared by end user. This enables analysis in different modes, one right after the other – in the same housing! For example, sample can be quickly analyzed on ion-exchanger disk monolith, e.g. CIM® QA, which can be quickly switched with e.g. affinity chromatography CIM® Protein A disk. CIM® Disk Monolithic Columns also have adjustable column length - working on the laboratory scale has never been so easy! Simply place up to 4 CIM® Disks in a single housing and capacity increases accordingly, while resolution stays the same. One of the most innovative and advantageous features of the CIM® supports is the possibility of preparing a CIM® Conjoint Liquid Chromatography (CLC) Disk Monolithic Column by placing CIM® Disks with different active groups into one housing. This enables a single step protein separation and purification using very low void volume column, which is an additional major benefit. CIM® Monolithic Technology enables assembling of tailored columns to match your particular needs in just a minute.

  4. High Productivity at Lower Cost: Decreased purification time on CIM® results in a significant reduction of the purification process costs. This is a result of much faster separations, high volumetric throughput and low back pressure. Fast separation times enable more than 100 runs in a single working day! Long lifetime of CIM® monoliths is very important factor for keeping the costs down: a couple hundred of analyzes can be carried out without any significant loss of resolution! Also, Drug Master Files for CIM® QA, DEAE are already available and conform to cGMP standards.