Saurav Datta joined as an Assistant Professor at Amgen Bioprocessing Center, Henry E. Riggs School of Applied Life Sciences, Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) in January 2020. Prior to that, he served as an Assistant Professor at Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee), India, from 2014-2019. He also worked as a Chemical Engineer (2011-2013) and as a Postdoctoral Fellow (2008-2010) at Energy Systems Division, Argonne National Laboratory. Earlier, he obtained PhD from Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Kentucky. He obtained Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) and University of Calcutta, India, respectively.
His current research interests are focused on advanced processing of biopharmaceuticals, such as monoclonal antibody, plasmid DNA, viral vectors and exosomes.
Selected Journal Publications (Visit Google Scholar for the full list)
Conference Presentations
We leverage fundamental principles of Chemical Engineering, Biotechnology and Chemistry to develop advanced bioprocesses with enhanced efficiency, scalability and economic feasibility. Research activities in the major areas of biopharmaceutical processing are outlined below.
Viral Vectors and plasmid DNAs: Plasmid DNA (pDNA) is one of the major components for manufacturing next-generation biomolecules, such as viral vectors for gene therapy and DNA-based vaccines. With the use of pDNA expanding to next-generation biomolecules, large-scale manufacturing and obtaining the desired purity of the product are emerging as the major bottleneck. Similarly, efficient production of viral vectors, such as adeno-associated virus (AAV), is critical to the success of gene therapy. Our team focuses on bioprocessing of both pDNA and AAV. On the pDNA space, we aim to develop a membrane-based pDNA purification technology supported by process optimization using combination of experimental and modeling approaches. Then, we perform triple-transient transfection in mammalian cells to produce AAV followed by chromatography and membrane-based purification of AAV vectors.
Exosomes: Extracellular vesicles, such as exosomes, have attracted significant attention due to potential therapeutic benefits. However, scalable, cost-effective and efficient manufacturing techniques are the need of the hour. Our team is exploring mesenchymal stem cell-based production followed by membrane-based purification of exosomes.
Monoclonal antibody (mAb): Biopharmaceutical industry is heavily benefited from the platform approach in downstream processing (DSP) of monoclonal antibody (mAb) manufacturing. We aim to contribute towards further advancement of the mAb manufacturing process by exploring perfusion-based upstream processing, process analytical technologies (PATs) and computational approaches.
PhD Students