ProNaGen: Engineering of Recombinant Protein Nanosheet-Based Bioemulsions for Next Generation Bioprocessing and Biomanufacturing

An important hurdle to the democratisation of cell therapies and cell-based in vitro models remains our limited ability to scale up and automate cell manufacturing and processing. Whilst solid and hydrogel microcarriers and magnetic microparticles have shown some promise to tackle this pitfall, they remain difficult to process and separate from cell products, lead to potential contamination of the cell mass generated and are associated with high costs. The design of affordable, scalable and regulatory-ready platforms for the culture and processing of adherent cells, yet by-passing the reliance on solid substrates and microcarriers, remains essential for cell manufacturing and will have an important impact on the sustained growth of associated biotech markets. To bypass the contamination of cell products with microplastics or particles, simplify bioprocessing and reduce associated costs, bioemulsions have recently been proposed as attractive alternatives. Although their performance has been demonstrated in a growing number of cases, current protein and polymer nanosheet technologies rely on protein and materials that present a risk for regulatory compliance, for applications in regenerative medicine (including for cell implantation).