BioLector Pro – A new microbioreactor platform for strain design under full bioprocess control

Today bioprocess development is largely performed in lab-scale stirred tank bioreactors due to the controlled process conditions provided by these reactors.  There have been some developments of bioreactors for high-throughput and ease of use, however, these technologies lack pH-control and feeding.  For this reason, m2p-labs amplified the spectrum of their mircobioreactor technology, BioLector^®, to include pH-control and continuous feeding options.  Basically, the BioLector^® is a fiber-optic online-monitoring system which allows detection of biomass, pH & DO as well as fluorescence in continuously shaking microtiter plates.  Now the BioLector^® has been combined with microfluidic bioprocess control to realize continuous pH-control and feeding in up to 32 parallel fermentations, the BioLector^® Pro.  This expands the capabilities of the BioLector^® to pH-profiling and fed-batch optimization.  This system was designed to apply disposable microfluidic well plates for the ease of use, minimal set up time, more efficiency and lower costs.  The BioLector^® Pro is the smallest and most advanced microbioreactor system to run 32 parallel fully controlled fermentations.  The continuous feed of substrate avoids intermittent handling by robots and thus, provides a better scale-down model for industrial-scale bioreactors.  Here m2p-labs reports the development of this new microbioreactor platform and gives examples of the actual applications in biomass development.  Finally, the scale-up potential of the microfermentations is evaluated by comparing the micro-scale results with that of fully controlled stirred tank bioreactors at 2L scale.  In conclusion, a user-friendly, disposable microfluidic bioreactor system was created that allows scalable, fully monitored and fully controlled fermentations at micro-scale.