Vaccines: Virus Particle Characterization

Since viruses can cause various diseases—some life-threatening—characterizing virus particles thoroughly in terms of their size distribution, aggregation, and absolute counts-per-unit volume is of extreme importance. Though size exclusion chromatography (SEC) has been the primary tool for separating aggregates of molecules, it is generally not appropriate for fractionating viruses because viruses and their aggregates are subject to shearing degradation by the stationary phase. Moreover, they can also be caught by the columns due to their large sizes.