Upstream Processing

Dissolved Oxygen Control Tuning for Cell Culture Applications

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Proper tuning of dissolved oxygen (DO) controller proportional integral (PI) values is essential for optimal cell culture performance in a bioreactor. When DO-PI values are optimized, gas flows are smoothed, and foaming and cell stress are reduced. Traditionally, this tuning has been performed by using nitrogen gas to purge oxygen from a test solution, thus simulating oxygen demand. That method has several drawbacks, however. First, nitrogen gassing cannot simulate the high demands of high-density fermentation. Second, nitrogen competes with other…

September 22, 2020

Continuous Biomanufacturing Implementation: Using an Intensified and Integrated Bioprocess Platform

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Recent world events have demonstrated now more than ever the growing demand for pharmaceutical biologics that can be made rapidly and in high volumes yet somehow remain affordable. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop a next-generation biomanufacturing solution that provides high-yield, high-quality drug products and is highly flexible and cost-effective. Herein we describe the WuXi Biologics ultrahigh productivity platform (WuXiUP), an intensified perfusion culture process developed to meet the aforementioned need. WuXiUP adopts process-intensification strategies on to traditional…

August 10, 2020

eBook: Expression Systems — Innovative Techniques for Conventional Cell Lines

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Although Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) and Escherichia coli cells have become the biopharmaceutical industry’s preferred platforms for producing recombinant proteins, perennial challenges have limited the capabilities of those expression systems. New CHO lines and improved upstream methods steadily are increasing expression titers, yet researchers continue to decry CHO’s relatively low growth rate. E. coli exhibits strong growth kinetics but cannot perform posttranslational modifications necessary for complex therapeutic proteins. Researchers need advanced technologies and analytical methods to overcome such limitations. This…

July 23, 2020

Application of Targeted Locus Amplification for Enhanced Apollo X CHO Clone Screening

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Speed to market is an important consideration for the development of lifesaving therapies, including recombinant monoclonal antibodies. However, increased speed must be balanced with quality to enable quick and efficient delivery of biopharmaceuticals to patients. Important determinants of quality include the genomic location and integrity of the transgene sequence within a recombinant cell line. Traditional methods of genetic characterization can provide incomplete information and results can be difficult to interpret. However, next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches such as Targeted Locus Amplification…

June 17, 2020

The Upstream Perspective: Taking Efficiency Beyond Cell-Line Development

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With 20 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry — at Genentech, Applied Biosystems, Cell Genesys, Cellerant Therapeutics, and Bayer — Yuval Shimoni has written frequently for BioProcess International on a number of production topics. Those have ranged from process improvements and bioreactor scale-down validation, to raw materials management, to addressing variability and virus contamination events. For this featured report, we discussed hardware and instrumentation, quality by design (QbD) and related approaches, and other strategies that can take expediting upstream…

June 16, 2020

Get to IND Faster: Accelerated and High-Performance Cell-Line Development

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In April 2020, Samsung Biologics hosted a webinar with John Gill, the company’s director of cell-line development (CLD). He focused first on chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) activities needed for preparing an investigational new drug (IND) application. Then he introduced a fast timeline for managing CLD programs to accelerate client projects to success. CMC Activities Samsung Biologics is a fully integrated contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). Starting with a client’s gene of interest (GoI), Gill’s group tailors CLD to…

June 16, 2020

Applications of Disposable Technologies for Upstream Bioprocessing

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Over the past 10 years, a number of developments in disposable (limited use) and single-use technologies (SUTs) have been made for different bioprocess operations. Until recent years, much of the industry’s process equipment was sterilized using thermal methods such as autoclaving. Most equipment was reusable and required cleaning and sterilization before use. Such processes required validation and expensive and time-consuming resources. Production facilities relied on hard-piped, inflexible equipment such as large stainless-steel bioreactors and holding tanks. However, advanced SUTs now…

June 11, 2020

Anticipating Cell-Line Challenges to Drive CMC Readiness

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Development of a safe and high-quality Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell line is of paramount importance for the chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) portion of studies that support investigational new drug (IND) applications (1, 2). Desirable attributes of a CHO cell line include its ability to produce high titers of biotherapeutic proteins facilitate quick recoveries and selection processes maintain phenotypic and genetic stability throughout in-vitro aging of a culture. A CHO cell line also should be scalable to high-capacity culture…

June 10, 2020

Retrofitting Your Bioreactor to Enhance Stirring Processes: Replacing Old Agitators with State-of-the-Art Magnetic Mixing Technology

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A key challenge for companies involved in drug development is to meet the highest standards of sterile design and reliability. In this context, magnetic mixers offers many advantages for aseptic stirring processes compared to mechanically sealed agitators. ZETA not only supplies magnetic agitators for new bioreactors, but also supports its customers through the entire retrofitting process, from feasibility studies at the beginning to full process qualification and validation at the end. “Combat the risk of batch contamination in bioreactors and…

June 10, 2020

A Rapid, Low-Risk Approach Process Transfer of Biologics from Development to Manufacturing Scale

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Successful scale-up of cell culture for manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals gives companies time to accelerate clinical development, product commercialization, and market access (1). Scaling a cell culture process in stirred-tank bioreactors ideally includes optimizing that process at laboratory scale and then transferring it through larger pilot-scale and finally to manufacturing-scale bioreactors (2). This is a complex, time-consuming business that can involve process transfer — sometimes to different geographical locations and through many sizes of bioreactors, each of which can operate according…

May 24, 2020