(194f) Single Use Centrifuge "Unifuge in Bioseparations"

Single Use Centrifuge (UniFuge®) for the Clarification of Mammalian cells

By David R, Richardson Global Single Use UniFuge® Manager, PSAngelus (A Division of Barry Wehmiller)

The large scale economic collection of proteins is increasingly an important problem for the Biotechnology industry. Generally, proteins are produced by cell culture, engineered to produce the proteins of interest by insertion of a recombinant plasmid containing the gene for that protein. Since the cell lines used are living organisms, they must be fed with a complex growth medium. Separation of the desired protein from the fermentation broth poses challenges.

Advances in cell culture techniques have greatly increased the cell populations and titers of the target proteins in culture fluid. This increase in upstream efficiency has led to a bottleneck in downstream processing at the cell-harvest stage. Cell harvesting or clarification of the harvested cell culture fluid is an important process. When the product is extracellular cell harvesting is used to separate the product from the cells and cellular debris. Most Biopharm companies today are seeking ways to integrate single use technology (including harvest) into a complete SU process path. The UniFuge®, Single Use Centrifuge fits very well into this SU initiative. This presentation will compare the UniFuge to several cell harvest/clarification processes.