A prototype micro-fermentation platform for microbial strain and process development.

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A key need in the bioprocessing sector is for systems that can reduce the costs and timesassociated with the development of biological manufacturing processes. This would increasecompetitiveness through reduced times to market and improve quality and production cost andefficiency.This project aims to deliver a working prototype of an innovative bioprocessing platform thatmeets growing needs in diverse industry sectors. The instrument will run up to 48independent micro-bioreactors in parallel (10-15 ml each) for the development andoptimisation of industrial microbial processes. The functionality of this instrument aims toenable users to rapidly and cost effectively screen organisms (or strains) and growthparameters (e.g. media) and optimise the culture conditions before progressing to largeconventional fermentors. At present developers undertake such early processes in nonbioreactorconditions, such as shake flasks which lack control systems and are sub-optimalsince the conditions used do not properly reflect larger scale manufacturing conditions. Forthese reasons, current biomanufacturing processes and their development are often inefficientand sub-optimalEach small-scale bioreactor will be a single-use disposable item supplied in a sterile, ready-touseformat, removing the need for sterilisation and cleaning at instrument turnaround betweenexperiments. Current alternate strategies using numerous reusable bench-scale fermentors areslow due to cleaning, sterilisation and complex set-up activities and impose high labourburdens during set-up and operations.The system described will reduce the labour required to carry out such experimentation andincrease the number of experiments possible by an order of magnitude. Adopters of theinstrumentation platform developed in this project will improve their competitiveness byreducing the cost of development of improved processes and, critically, reducing thedevelopment cycle time.