Prof. Croughan to Discuss Breakthrough Technology at Summit
Professor Matthew Croughan, PhD, will give a presentation at IBC Life Sciences' 6th Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing and Development (BMD) Summit being held November 1-3 in Boston, Massachusetts.
The conference is designed for scientists and engineers from industry and academia to collectively examine and provide manufacturing solutions to operating challenges.
An industry expert in the field of bioprocessing, Croughan, KGI's George B. and Joy Rathmann Professor and director of the Amgen Bioprocessing Center, will discuss, "A Novel Method to Reduce Lactic Acid Production and Control pH in Animal Cell Culture."
Fed-batch CHO cell culture has emerged as one of the dominant methods for production of recombinant proteins, especially high-dose therapeutic antibodies.
The metabolism of CHO cells can be controlled by varying the levels of lactate to which the CHO cells have been adapted, according to Croughan. "Our breakthrough technology reduces both lactic acid production and base consumption by eight fold," he said. "We thus avoid excessive increases in osmolality, even when adding many nutrient feeds."
Croughan adds: "To date, we have hit viable cell densities of 35 million cells per millimeter, among the highest ever reported for a fed-batch animal cell culture."
In addition to his full-time teaching and research duties at KGI, Croughan works as an independent consultant, providing expert guidance on biopharmaceutical process development and manufacturing issues for more than 50 firms, including Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Alavita, Xoma, Shire and Genzyme.
Croughan was the chief scientist for Genentech's cell culture facility in Vacaville, California, built for the production of therapeutic antibodies. Earlier at Genentech, he developed the first FDA-licensed, fed-batch cell culture process, a breakthrough platform technology now used throughout the biopharmaceutical industry.