Innovative Non-invasive and Affordable Technology to Automate Monitoring of Cultures to Enhance Productivity and Accelerate Fermentation and Scale-up in Bioprocessing

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Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK

£249,955

May 31, 2023

Nov. 30, 2023

Cultivation of biological cells and microorganisms is essential in bioprocessing for producing high-value therapeutics, vaccines, biofuel and food and beverage products. Constant monitoring and feeding of the fermentation process in real-time are essential for optimisation, efficiency, and reproducibility. Cultivation vessels are either equipped with invasive sensors or require manual samplings and feeding methods to keep the culturing process under control. This introduces a contamination risk and does not allow remote monitoring outside the lab. Moreover, this invasive and labour-intensive process burdens the workforce, affects efficiency, increases cost, leads to contamination risk and is not eco-friendly due to the consumption of many single-use plastics.

Implementing an innovative non-invasive and affordable monitoring and feeding devices to automate the monitoring of cultures remotely and in real-time will eliminate the invasive and off-line manual monitoring and feeding practices. This will facilitate remote tracking of cultures, especially during lab access restrictions like the COVID-19 situation or fire alarms to increase productivity and decrease costs.

We envisage future monitoring and feeding systems for culturing vessels to exploit state-of-the-art engineering biology and optical sensing technologies to seamlessly control the cultivation process remotely and in-real time. This will significantly decrease contamination enhancing precision fermentation and scale-up to accelerate R&D and research breakthroughs.

This project will have a huge impact to optimise manufacturing, and enhancing workforce efficiency, reproducibility and accuracy than ever before. Our solutions will reduce lab plastic waste, decrease cost and maximise profit to create a significant economic and environmental impact.

Our business offers job opportunities for students and graduates focusing on women and ethnic minorities to support the local economy and enhance diversity and inclusiveness in the biotech industry. This ambitious project thus provides a timely opportunity for the UK to remain at the forefront of innovations in biotechnology. Our disruptive monitoring and feeding technologies will transform the bioprocessing landscape to advance health care and industrial production.