Exosomes are gaining prominence as vectors for drug delivery, vaccination, and regenerative medicine. Owing to their surface biochemistry, which reflects the parent cell membrane, these nanoscale biologics feature low immunogenicity, tunable tissue tropism, and the ability to carry a variety of payloads across biological barriers. The heterogeneity of exosomes’ size and composition, however, makes their purification challenging. Traditional techniques, like ultracentrifugation and filtration, afford low product yield and purity, and jeopardizes particle integrity. Affinity chromatography represents an excellent avenue for exosome purification. Yet, current affinity media rely on antibody ligands whose selectivity grants high product purity, but mandates the customization of adsorbents for exosomes with different surface biochemistry while their binding strength imposes elution conditions that may harm product’s activity. Addressing these issues, this study introduces the first peptide affinity ligands for the universal purification of exosomes from recombinant feedstocks. The peptides were designed to (i) possess promiscuous biorecognition of exosome markers, without binding process-related contaminants, and (ii) elute the product under conditions that safeguard product stability. Selected ligands SNGFKKHI and TAHFKKKH demonstrated the ability to capture of exosomes secreted by 14 cell sources and purified exosomes derived from HEK293, PC3, MM1, U87, and COLO1 cells with yields of up-to 80% and up-to 50-fold reduction of host cell proteins upon eluting with pH gradient from 7.4 to 10.5, recommended for exosome stability. SNGFKKHI-Toyopearl resin was finally employed in a 2-step purification process to isolate exosomes from HEK293 cell fluids, affording a yield of 68% and reducing the titer of host cell proteins to 68 ng/mL. The biomolecular and morphological features of the isolated exosomes were confirmed by analytical chromatography, Western blotting, transmission electron microscopy, nanoparticle tracking analysis.

K. phaffii is a versatile expression system that is increasingly utilized to produce biological therapeutics – including enzymes, engineered antibodies, and gene-editing tools – that feature multiple subunits and complex post-translational modifications. Two major roadblocks limit the adoption of K. phaffii in industrial biomanufacturing: its proteome, while known, has not been linked to downstream process operations and detailed knowledge is missing on problematic host cell proteins (HCPs) that endanger patient safety or product stability; furthermore, the purification toolbox has not evolved beyond the capture of monospecific antibodies, and few solutions are available for engineered antibody fragments and other protein therapeutics. To unlock the potential of yeast-based biopharmaceutical manufacturing, this study presents (i) a secretome survey of K. phaffii cell culture harvests that highlights HCPs with predicted immunogenicity, ability to cause product instability by proteolysis or degradation of excipients, and potential to interfere with purification operations via product association or co-elution; and (ii) a novel affinity adsorbent functionalized with peptide ligands that target the whole spectrum of K. phaffii HCPs – PichiaGuard – designed for the enrichment of therapeutic proteins in flow-through mode. The PichiaGuard adsorbent features high HCP binding capacity (~25 g per liter of resin) and successfully purified a monoclonal antibody and an ScFv fragment from clarified K. phaffii harvests, affording up to 80% product yield, and a >300-fold removal of HCPs. Notably, PichiaGuard outperformed commercial ion exchange and mixed-mode resins in removing high-risk HCPs – including aspartic proteases, ribosomal subunits, and other peptidases – thus demonstrating its value in modern biopharmaceutical processing.