PhD Dissertation Defense – Christine Urrea, PhD Student– “Continuous Bioprocessing: Technology for Next-Generation Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing”

Please join us for Christine Urrea’s PhD Dissertation Defense on:

Current industrial practices for producing biopharmaceuticals include fed-batch production with batch isolation and purification. Nonproductive hold-up steps and manual offline measurements are common in batch processing which increases processing time and contributes to a high cost of production. Current market trends and cost pressures in the industry are creating a push to innovate bioprocessing platforms. Continuous bioprocessing has been considered a solution to the current limitations of batch production of biopharmaceuticals.

Current bottlenecks of implementing continuous bioprocessing include real-time monitoring, control technology, and versatile scale-down models for process understanding and development. Technologies such as Raman spectroscopy, perfusion cell culture, and continuous chromatography are explored in my Ph.D. project to develop a versatile bench-scale continuous platform driven by open-source software as a proof-of-concept. Real-time, inline monitoring of critical nutrients for cell culture via Raman spectroscopy generates a feedback control to nutrient pumps to maintain a continuous supply of nutrients for the production of biopharmaceuticals. The products are then continuously harvested to a two-column platform. Our preliminary data support that the bench-scale platform is readily maneuverable to customized requirements, adaptable for the production of different modalities, and much cheaper for implementation.

Date:  Thursday, May 4, 2023

Time: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Location:  Building 535, Room 35