Alternatives for plasma fractionation.

At the present time there is an enormously increasing demand for albumin. The most common procedure for the isolation of this plasma component is the cold ethanol technique developed by Cohn. Because this process necessarily isolates other blood components for which there is less demand in relation to albumin, albumin production is expensive. Therefore, we have developed a two-step fractionation for the isolation of albumin. It is basically a heat precipitation method with the albumin yield being about 90% of the original plasma albumin. In comparison to cold ethanol methods, it is considerably less expensive. Other blood components, e.g., clotting factors, immunoglobulins, may also be isolated. A nonmodified gamma-globulin for intravenous use is obtained by removing anti-complementary activity with hydroxyethyl starch. Additional fractionation steps are required to isolate these other components, but unlike in established methods, these are not necessary for the isolation of solely albumin.