Bacteriophage production using self-cycling fermentation technology

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

There is an increasing interest in the production of bacteriophages (phages), which can be used directly in phage therapy, diagnostics and as antibacterial agents and can also be used to produce recombinant proteins, which can be used as pharmaceuticals and in agriculture and food applications. The large scale production of phages is difficult. Self-cycling fermentation (SCF) was developed in my laboratories and is a method of growing microbes continuously, in synchronous culture. The work proposed here is an adaptation of SCF to significantly improve the production of phages. The research will apply a cycling strategy to the production of phages and, eventually, recombinant proteins having phages as vectors and adopt a novel control strategy which simplifies SCF and optimizes the production. The system will be developed as two independently cycling bioreactors. The first stage is used for the growth of the host and operates as a normal self-cycling fermentor (SCF). The second stage is used for the infection of the host by the phage and is called the self-cycling infection chamber (SCIC).