Regenerative BioCrystallisation

Advances and breakthroughs in target-oriented biotechnology research are vital to the development of new biopharmaceutical products and treatments. Despite the increasing success in discovering protein-based medicines and progress on upstream bioprocess, manufacturing especially downstream bioseparation process at scale remains a significant challenge in the biopharmaceutical industry at present, such as (a) low through-put production, (ii) costly and complex downstream steps, and (iii) impurity and instability during the storage and transport. The bottleneck in downstream biomanufacturing limit the scaling up in downstream bioprocess, such as bioseparaton, limit the economic scale-up benefit from upstream transform to downstream, and, accordingly, limit the wide application of the advanced biopharmaceuticals to the patients, and limit the disease survival rates, such as cancer. Biocrystallisation is an alternatives to the current complex downstream bioseparation technology, such as multiple chromatography, which are high cost, low efficient and hard to scale up.

The vision here is to develop an interdisciplinary technology (bioengineering, bioseparation and biochemical engineering) de-bottleneck of downstream bioprocessing, integrating upstream (producing protein) and downstream bioprocess (biocrystallisation and bioseparation). Regenerative biocrystallisation leads to a novel and simplified biomanufacturing technology to directly grow biocrystal/protein crystals in vivo. The biocrystallisation inside cells ensure deliver 21st biopharmaceuticals with high purity and quality with low cost, high efficiency and easy to scale up. This technology is transformative, but there are with relatively high risks associated with this adventurous, original and ambitious project. Interdisciplinary experts will help to steer the project. The new scientific understanding in this project and the risks has the very real potential to deliver an new insight technology, and bring new insight into biomanufacturing inside cell.

This research will enable the PI and PDRA to develop interdisciplinary collaborations with existing EPSRC Centres of Excellence, UK biopharmaceutical industrial partners and academic groups internationally.

Impact Summary

The success of the proposed is to develop a novel technology to efficiently deliver 21st century biopharmaceuticals by replacing the current complex chromatographic approaches in downstream manufacturing. The new technology will lead new generation of biotechnology for biopharmaceuticals manufacturing with high efficiency and low cost. In addition, crystalline biopharmaceuticals improve the stability, enabling easy and low-cost storage and delivery than traditional product forms, and reduce the like hood of side-effects and can be expected to increase disease survival rates. A Steering Committee from interdisciplinary research area will steer the project. This proposal will intent to develop collaborations with EPSRC Future Manufacturing Research Hubs and other UK collaborations in interdisciplinary research fields.

This proposal will liaise closely with the technology transfer research office at the university to identify potential opportunities for Intellectual Property arising from the project. It will potential reinforce the research vision by further develop the intellectual properties to apply the new technology on the scaling up of the industrial biopharmaceutical manufacturing for future beneficiaries of UK biopharma industrial and wider biotechnology stakeholders. This research will take activities, such as international conference (ACS and AICHE) and UK conferences, high-quality publication to assure research is well publicised to ensure maximum exposure to the scientific and industrial community; such as outreach, school visit, engagements in University / Departmental Open Days, and science festival to assure research is well publicised to ensure maximum exposure to the general public. Dedicated designed web, together with other online social networking, such as twitter and LinkedIn, will be used to broadcast the new technology developing, public science and sharing the new research ideas, for enhancing the connection between academic and industrial collaborations, and further raise the public engagements with science.