I am a fifth year Ph. D. candidate at North Carolina Central University in the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (BRITE). My project involves the purification of asialo-erythropoietin (asialo-rhuEPO). Asialo-rhuEPO is a non-erythrogenic erythropoietin derivative generated by the removal sialic acid residues from its N-glycan chains. Studies have reported it to be a potent cytoprotective agent for cardiomyocytes, neuronal, pancreatic, renal and liver cells. Our lab has expressed asialo-rhuEPO using a plant-based expression system as opposed to the typical mammalian expression system. Our findings thus far reveal that plant produced asialo-rhuEPO (asialo-rhuEPOP) possesses better cytoprotective activities than rhuEPO. Despite achieving high expression levels in plants, an efficient purification procedure to obtain pure asialo-rhuEPOP from plant extracts has been lacking , which has become an obstacle to exploring its clinical uses. Therefore, we have developed a procedure to purify asialo-rhuEPOP transgenic tobacco leaf tissues in two steps: ion exchange and immunoaffinity chromatography. We were able to recover 31% of asialo-rhuEPOP from plant extracts and were able to test its cytoprotective effects. Our results show that asialo-rhuEPOP provides up to 40% cytoprotection to the RIN-m5F β-cell line.