Monday, November 4, 2013
Capri Ballroom (Marriott Marco Island)
Single-use bioreactors are usually applied in the biopharmaceutical industry for mammalian cell culture processes. For microbial processes, concepts like the CELL-tainer® technology allow comparable gas-liquid mass transfer rates like in stirred tank reactors. In the CELL-tainer, the rocking motion of the bag is generated with a combination of a vertical and horizontal movement. Due to a 2-D rocking motion, the turbulence in the liquid is intensified. Thus, volumetric oxygen transfer rates (kLa) of over 400 h-1 could be achieved. Recently, the successful scale-up of an Escherichia coli nutrient-limited fed-batch cultivation from the 15 L to the 150 L scale in the CELL-tainer single-use bioreactor has been conducted. A final biomass concentration of 45 gL-1 within 24 hrs was obtained in cultivations proving the general suitability of this reactor concept for the application of bacterial processes. A good process performance has also been obtained at marine, shear-sensitive heterotrophic algae cultivations in the CELL-tainer, proving the suitability of the concept for this kind of bioprocesses, at which the application of stainless steel-based reactors is restricted due to corrosion. The combination of intelligent software sensor control strategies and currently improving (single-use) sensors will lead to a reduction of current drawbacks and improve control of bacterial fed-batch processes. The availability of single-use bioreactors for microbial cultivations widens their potential, not only in biopharmaceutical processing, but also as a pre-culture bioreactor for large scale processes and as a suitable tool in (marine) bioprocess development.