Oligonucleotides (or oligos) are short, synthetic strands of DNA or RNA that can be used as therapies to prevent gene expression or hinder protein function by binding to a target gene or protein sequence. The fast-growing oligo therapeutics market includes highly targeted antisense DNA and small interfering RNA (siRNA) and holds promise for treating cancers, genetic diseases, and other conditions.

Learn more about oligo workflows and solutions for oligonucleotide process development, from scalable oligo synthesis to cleavage, purification, and buffer exchange.

Once synthesized, the oligonucleotide sequence is cleaved from the solid support. You can choose to remove the 5ʹ-protective dimethoxytrityl (DMTr) group during this step or later during purification to enrich full-length oligonucleotide in reverse-phase chromatography (RPC) or hydrophobic-interaction chromatography (HIC).

We build dedicated hardware solutions for cleavage and deprotection. Learn more about Customized BioProcess™ Solutions.

Buffer exchange removes excess salts and minimizes yield loss after IEX. Size-exclusion chromatography is a good option for desalting at research scale. For process development and manufacturing, tangential flow filtration (TFF) is typically used for buffer exchange. We offer single-use hollow fiber cartridges for efficient and aseptic TFF.