Improving impurities clearance by amino acids addition to buffer solutions for chromatographic purifications of monoclonal antibodies

•Chromatography for monoclonal antibody purification when using amino acids was presented.•Effective impurity clearance was obtained when using amino acids.•The buffer system using a single amino acid, histidine, was designed and also provided high product purity. The performance of amino acids in Protein A affinity chromatography, anion exchange chromatography and cation exchange chromatography for monoclonal antibody purification was investigated. Glycine, threonine, arginine, glutamate, and histidine were used as buffer components in the equilibration, washing, and elution steps of these chromatographies. Improved clearance of impurity, high molecular weight species (HMW) and host cell proteins (HCP) was observed in the purification processes when using the amino acids as base-buffer constituents, additives or eluents compared with that of buffers without these amino acids. In addition, we designed a buffer system in which the mobile phases were composed of only a single amino acid, histidine, and applied it to the above three chromatographies. Effective HMW and HCP clearance was also obtained in this manner. These results suggest that amino acids may enhance impurity clearance during the purification of monoclonal antibodies.