PRELIMINARY MODELING OF AN INDUSTRIAL RECOMBINANT HUMAN ERYTHROPOIETIN PURIFICATION PROCESS BY ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

In the present study a preliminary neural network modelling to improve our understanding of Recombinant Human Erythropoietin purification process in a plant was explored. A three layer feed-forward back propagation neural network was constructed for predicting the efficiency of the purification section comprising four chromatographic steps as a function of eleven operational variables. The neural network model performed very well in the training and validation phases. Using the connection weight method the predictor variables were ranked based on their estimated explanatory importance in the neural network and five input variables were found to be predominant over the others. These results provided useful information showing that the first chromatographic step and the third chromatographic step are decisive to achieve high efficiencies in the purification section, thus enriching the control strategy of the plant.