Welcome to FranciGen!

FranciGen specializes on the the development and sales of application specific capturing schemes for proteins, antibodies, DNA and other natural substances present in dilute concentrations in untreated solutions such as lysates.

The capturing process is based on affinity precipitation with thermo-responsive polymers.

Affinity Precipitation



Affinity precipitation is based on the platform technology "stimulus-responsive polymers", also called "smart materials". These polymers show a highly nonlinear behavior towards external stimuli, such as the temperature. When a certain temperature is surpassed, polymers, which were perfectly water-soluble before, will flock out (precipitate) within seconds. This process is fully and quickly reversible, and such polymers can be precipitated, re-dissolved and precipitated again many times by minor changes of the temperature. In order to exploit this effect for product isolation, it suffices to chemically conjugate the polymer to a small affinity ligand, which is capable of specifically recognizing the target molecule. The result is the so-called affinity macroligand (AML), a molecule, which can be used to first bind and subsequently co-precipitate the product and only the product even from most complex raw solutions.

Thermo-responsive AML
Thermo-responsive AML are water-soluble poly-N-alkylacrylamides with defined chain length, transformation temperature and terminal affinity end group. The affinity end group can be varied according to need and allows the easy capture of a variety of target molecules. The AML have oligomeric character (short chain length), hence assuring (i) very homogeneous structure and size, (ii) uniform affinity environment, (iii) high ligand efficiency, (iv) optimum ligand accessibility, and (v) lack of non-specific interaction. Only these five features guarantee the specific and efficient purification of the target substance. This thermoresponsive effect is independent of the conjugated ligand and therefore a wide variety of such ligands can be applied.

The liquid (for example cell lysate made from bacteria) containing the target molecule is mixed with an appropriate amount of affinity macroligands (AML) under appropriate affinity conditions. The AML is a conjugate between our dedicated oligomeric AML-precursor and a ligand, whose affinity is specific to a motif on the target molecule.


By increasing the temperature the AML-Target complex is precipitated, typically in the presence of a suitable filter aid.

After filtration and washing, the specifically bound target molecule is released by washing the complex with a dissociation buffer. Filter aid and uncharged AML can be reused.

Advantages of affinity precipitation technique:

  1. High productivity due to reduced number of process steps, reduced process volume and consistently high yields
  2. Reproducible and flexible process
  3. Easily scalable
  4. Low capital investment
  5. Low operating and maintenance costs