Development of an universally useable single-use bioreactor for the benchtop scale

Biotherapeutics have great potential for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. They are considered to be the pharmaceuticals of the future. The bioreactor, in which microorganisms or animal cell cultures usually express the product, is the central element of the manufacturing process. Due to their specific morphology, growth and product formation properties, both production organism types have different requirements with regard to energy, gas, heat and oxygen input. In order to meet these requirements, stirred microbial and cell culture bioreactors differ in their geometry and equipment. This also applies to the agitator and the drive, whereby different agitator types or combinations with varying power inputs are used depending on the application. As part of a cooperation project with Levitronix GmbH, a novel bioreactor drive is being developed that can be used both for microorganisms and cell cultures on a benchtop scale. The use of a universal, sealfree, magnetically driven bottom agitator has shown promising results. Due to the contactless agitator, no damaging frictional forces are transferred to the production organisms and the risk of contamination due to a lack of shaft feedthrough is minimised. The magnetic drive is able to meet the different demands on the environmental and cultivation conditions without any effort, modification or use of different bioreactor systems and enables the balancing act between cultivation with low (500 W/m3) up to high power inputs (25 kW/m3). First cultivations with Escherichia coli delivered high cell densities (86.6 g/L dry mass). During the mass propagation of CHO cells (Chinese hamster ovary cells) in a chemically defined minimum medium, the targeted middle cell densities were achieved with viabilities of 95 % on average