Improving Productivity in Bioreactors through control of foaming and cell heterogeneity

Heterogeneity of cell populations is a common occurrence in bioreactor operations (Lara et al., 2006) and is typically caused by processing of cell cultures in vessels of varying sizes and process conditions and by deficient mixing. Most bioreactor research deals with average conditions of the cell population with respect to quantities such as dissolved oxygen and extracellular nutrient level, while these averages actually correspond to very different distributions of individual cell growth and productivity. Thus, in the production of vaccine, different cells in the culture may exhibit at any given time different growth and may produce different amount of antigen.

The main goal of this proposed study is to improve bioreactor productivity by controlling cell heterogeneity. We propose to manipulate the cell distribution at the beginning of the culture to improve productivity of the process. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Hector Budman

Student:

Mariana Carvalho

Partner:

Sanofi

Discipline:

Engineering - chemical / biological

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Program: