Real-time quality checks for bioreactors
-
<ic:message key='Bild vergrößern' />
- Tracking microbial production in bioreactors using smart technology as well as direct evaluations of the quality of the resulting products – these are the goals of the new strategic alliance in industrial biotechnology Source: Sartorius AG
05.06.2014 -
The field of bioproduction utilises microbes or mammalian cells as living mini-factories. The central production location for biotechnology is the bioreactor – large, hi-tech containers of steel or plastic in which organisms are grown under optimal conditions. However, whether the product – from enzymes to active substance or biofuels – will eventually emerge in the desired quality can usually only be known at the end of the process. The goals of the new strategic alliance ‘Knowledge-based process intelligence’ (WiPro) are to bring this audit closer forward and to be able to directly observe the organisms during production. 20 German partners from academic research and industry will be working together in the project, which is coordinated by the laboratory and process technology provider Sartorius. The project is supported with around 9 million euros by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
Although highly modern process technology is already utilised in biotechnological production, the specifics of what is actually happening in the bioreactors remains mostly hidden to biotechnologists. “At this time, industrial bioprocesses are frequently performed almost blind,” says Reinhard Baumfalk from the company Sartorius. Only later can tests be carried out as to whether the organisms have produced the product reliably. This is both complicated and expensive, and sometimes even entire batches must be discarded. Moreover, attempts to continually improve manufacturing processes have slowed significantly in recent years.
| The alliance at a glance |
Industry partners: Sartorius Lab Instruments GmbH & Co. KG. (coordination), Sartorius Stedim Biotech GmbH, BlueSens gas sensor GmbH, PreSens Precision Sensing GmbH, TRACE Analytics GmbH, Centec GmbH, Partec GmbH, Siemens AG, Bayer Technology Services GmbH, Rentschler Biotechnologie GmbH, Ernst Böcker GmbH & Co. KG, Bitburger Braugruppe GmbH, Xell AG, Clariant Produkte GmbH, Chr. Hansen GmbH, Merz Pharma GmbH & Co. KGaA, Carlsberg A/S Group Research
|
A smarter view inside the bioreactor
“Our objective is to monitor, control and influence the quality of the materials produced during the manufacturing,” explains physicist Baumfalk. This is the precise aim of the strategic alliance ‘Knowledge-based process intelligence’, which takes in 20 partners from academia and industry from across Germany, and is led by the company Sartorius. The network will begin work in the summer of 2014 and has a budget of around 20 million euros for the next six years. The BMBF has provided nearly half this sum as part of the ‘Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Initiative’. Since 2012, this initiative has lent support to five strategic alliances.
Two model processes in the crosshairs
The new alliance brings together engineers, computer scientists and biotechnologists, who have set out to build a sensor- and software platform that combines innovative instrumentation with modern methods of data analysis. “It’s important for us to first precisely understand the principles of bioprocesses on the basis of suitable models,” says coordinator Baumfalk. All participants in the network will be focusing on two model processes in food biotechnology and pharmaceutical production – a unique feature of the collaboration. Throughout, the academic partners will be taking a key role. For example, a team headed by Thomas Scheper at Leibniz University of Hanover will be studying a hamster cell culture system for the production of biopharmaceuticals. Thomas Becker and his team at the Technical University of Munich will establish a model process with the yeast Pichia pastoris. On the basis of improved understanding of the processes, the partners plan to develop innovative sensor technology and to combine this with modern methods of data analysis and modelling. This will form a hardware and software platform that, in the future, will guarantee the continuous monitoring of production, higher process security and dependably high quality. “No alliance partners will be working alone – everyone is closely connected for the two model processes,” says Baumfalk.
| More on this subject on biotechnologie.de |
Industrial partners transform know-how into practice
The acquired know-how will be carried over to the second phase of the project, namely the in-house processes taking place on the side of industrial users. “Of course, every company has trade secrets in bioproduction, which will not be disclosed or exchanged in the alliance,” says Baumfalk. The industrial partners in WiPro include prestigious companies in food biotechnology (Chr. Hansen), the brewing industry (Bitburger, Carlsberg), biopharmaceutical manufacturing (Rentschler, Merz Pharma) and specialty chemicals (Clariant). All of these are extremely interested in stabilising their bioprocesses and in making them more reliable. In turn, this will enable them to not only improve the quality of their products but also make production more resource-efficient and environment-friendly.
