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

生物加工部门的一个关键需求是能够降低与生物制造工艺开发相关的成本和时间的系统。这将通过缩短上市时间和提高质量、生产成本和效率来提高竞争力。该项目旨在提供一个创新生物处理平台的工作原型，以满足不同工业部门日益增长的需求。该仪器将并行运行多达48个独立的微生物反应器（每个10-15 ml），用于开发和优化工业微生物过程。该仪器的功能旨在使用户能够快速和经济有效地筛选生物体（或菌株）和生长参数（例如培养基），并在进行大型常规发酵罐之前优化培养条件。目前，开发人员在非生物反应器条件下进行此类早期工艺，例如缺乏控制系统的摇瓶，并且由于所使用的条件不能正确反映大规模生产条件，因此不是最佳的。由于这些原因，目前的生物制造工艺及其发展往往效率低下，而且不是最优的。每个小型生物反应器都是一次性的，以无菌的、现成的形式提供，在实验之间的仪器周转中不需要消毒和清洁。目前使用许多可重复使用的实验规模发酵罐的替代策略由于清洁，灭菌和复杂的设置活动而速度很慢，并且在设置和操作期间施加了很高的劳动力负担。所描述的系统将减少进行此类实验所需的劳动力，并将实验的数量增加一个数量级。在这个项目中开发的仪器平台的采用者将通过减少改进过程的开发成本来提高他们的竞争力，关键的是，减少开发周期时间。

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.