Funding secured after BioProNET projects

To date, BioProNET-funded projects have leveraged over £990,000 of funding from industry to support collaborative bioprocessing projects.

Below are details of funding that has been secured following on from, or as a result of a BioProNET-funded project.

PhD: Microbial biotechnology applications for the production of novel enzymes’, lab work (of £10k per year) supported by Johnson Matthey following on from a business interaction voucher (BIV_Feb18_Dikicioglu) awarded to Duygu Dikicioglu

Algal vaccines for Aquaculture
Funded Value: £160,399 Funder: BBSRC
Saul Purton and Brenda Parker, University College London, following on from BIV_May17_Purton

Innovate UK funding of £70K for the project ‘Development of a novel membrane photobioreactor for cultivation of Haematococcus pluvialis as a biofilm’ to Varicon Aqua Solutions (following from BIV_Aug15_Allen)

Funding of £681K from the BBSRC and the US NSF for the project ‘synthetic gene circuits to measure and mitigate translational stress during heterologous protein expression’ to Ian Stanfield (following on from the BioProNET sandpit meeting).

Funding of £1.5M from the EPSRC awarded to Paul Dalby et al. for the project ‘Enabling rapid liquid and freeze-dried formulation design for the manufacture and delivery of novel biopharmaceuticals’ (from PoC_Dec14_Warwicker).

Posted on 20/07/2017 by BioProNET Network

BioProNET BIV and PoC funding awarded

Congratulations to the awardees of funding in our most recent call for business interaction vouchers and proof of concept funding:

Proof of concept funding:
Improved preservation of biologics by continuous intensified lyophilisation
Gary Montague, Teeside University; Lonza, Glythera, Accelyo
This project proposes to perform experimental trials of model biologics using laboratory-scale continuous intensified lyophilisation, a technology that uses intensified controlled rate freezing followed by continuous sublimation, to investigate whether this improves activity.

Investigating the effects of hydrodynamic force on the structure and biological integrity of a viral vector gene therapy product
David Brockwell, University of Leeds; Cobra Biologics
Here we aim to find whether a device we developed — that can identify ‘bioprocessible’ protein therapeutics and to optimize buffer conditions — can also inform gene therapy viral vector development or as an analytical tool to differentiate between vectors with empty or full payloads.

Top-down mass spectrometry methods for full characterisation of biopharmaceuticals
Perdita Barran, University of Manchester; Covance
Our aim is to characterize the primary sequence, to locate and analyse PTMs and to assess the three-dimensional structure and extent of aggregation of biopharmaceuticals as quickly as possible using direct mass analysis of native proteins directly from crude cell lysates, without any prior purification.

Business interaction vouchers:
Comparing the productivity of three cell-free extracts based on industrial cell lines
Karen Polizzi, Imperial College London; Lonza
It is unclear how much variability there is between cell-free systems produced from different cell lines. This project aims to compare cell-free systems made from three industrial cell lines to understand how much their protein production capabilities vary.

Scale up of vaccine production in a microalgal host for animal trials
Saul Purton, University College London; MicrosynbiotiX
We will examine the pilot scale production, harvesting and recovery of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii biomass that has been engineered to express a vaccine against a major fish pathogen, with the goal of producing sufficient dried algal material for formulation into fish-feed and use in challenge trials.

Click here for a list of all the proof of concept funding and busines interaction vouchers that we’ve awarded.

Posted on 12/07/2017 by BioProNET Network

Publications from BioProNET funding

Escherichia coli ‘TatExpress’ strains export several g/L human growth hormone to periplasm by the Tat pathway Guerrero Montero, I., Robinson, C. et al. Biotech. Bioeng. (2019 in press).

Web-based display of protein surface and pH-dependent properties for assessing the developability of biotherapeutics Hebditch M and Warwicker J. Scientific Reports 9, 1969 (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-36950-8

Characterization of a novel method for the production of single-span membrane proteins in Escherichia coli Smith SM, Walker KL, Jones AS, Smith CJ, Robinson C. Biotechnol Bioeng. 116, 722-733 (2019) doi: 10.1002/bit.26895

Hybrid mass spectrometry methods reveal lot-to-lot differences and delineate the effects of glycosylation on the tertiary structure of Herceptin Rosie Upton, Perdita Barran et al. Chem. Sci., 2019, doi: 10.1039/C8SC05029E

Surface patches on recombinant erythropoietin predict protein solubility: engineering proteins to minimise aggregation M. Alejandro Carballo-Amador, Jim Warwicker et al. BMC Biotechnology 19, 26 (2019)

Biosensor-assisted engineering of a high-yield Pichia pastoris cell-free protein synthesis platform Rochelle Aw and Karen Polizzi Biotechnol Bioeng.116, 656–666 (2019) doi: 10.1002/bit.26901

A protein chimera strategy supports production of a model difficult-to-express recombinant target Hirra Hussain, James Winterburn et al.FEBS Letters 592, 2499–2511 (2018) https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/1873-3468.13170

Tailoring the performance of organic solvent nanofiltration membranes with biophenol coatings Fan Fei, Gyorgy Szekely et al. ACS Appl. Polym. Mater. 1 452–460 (2019)

Constrained global sensitivity analysis for bioprocess design space identification
Pavlos Kotidisa, Cleo Kontoravdi et al. Computers & Chemical Engineering 125, 558-568 (2019)

Integrated production and separation of biosurfactants Ben Dolman, Fuju Wang & James Winterburn. Process Biochemistry 83,1-8 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procbio.2019.05.002

New perspectives on protein aggregation during biopharmaceutical development
Maryam Shah International Journal of Pharmaceutics 552, 1-6 (2018)

A protein chimera strategy supports production of a model difficult-to-express recombinant target Hirra Hussain, Alan Dickson et al. FEBS Letters592 2499–2511 (2018)

In vitro model for predicting bioavailability of subcutaneously injected monoclonal antibodies
Hanne Kinnunen Bown, Catherine Bonn, Stefan Yohe, Daniela Bumbaca Yadav, Thomas Patapoff, Ann Daugherty, Randall Mrsny
Journal of Controlled Release, Volume 273, Pages 13-20 10.1016/j.jconrel.2018.01.015

Posted on 29/06/2017 by BioProNET Network

The Bioprocessing Skills School

Screen Shot 2017-11-02 at 09.57.16

The first Bioprocessing Skills School took place on September 11-15th, 2017 at the National Biologics Manufacturing Centre, Darlington

“Important for my career development, fantastic experience”
“Absolutely brilliant, positively challenging environment and inspirational speakers”
“Enlightening, insightful, friendly, open environment to develop oneself”
“Excellent experience learning about teamwork and bioprocessing”
“Great experience, motivating, great opportunity to nurture and build connections”

The course was a week-long, intensive residential training programme, designed around the insights of industrialists, were delegates participated in group-based activities and work with real-life industrial case studies. The programme is designed to engage with the process of entrepreneurship and focus on the development of the ability to promote research ideas.

It is anticipated that another BioProcessing Skills School will run in September 2018. More details will be posted when available.

Posted on 16/06/2017 by BioProNET Network

Case studies of BioProNET-funded projects

Here are some highlights of completed BioProNET-funded projects – proof of concept funding, business interaction vouchers, workshop funding and scientific exchange awards.

Clicking on each title will open a pdf version of that case study. To see all the case studies in full on this website, click on the purple bar below the titles.

A new top-down mass spectrometry method for the rapid analysis of biopharmaceuticals
Analysis of historical bioprocessing data gives clues to microbial culture performance
Scale-up of vaccine production in a microalgal host for animal trials
Cobra Biologics – an interview with Daniel Smith
BioProNET early career researchers get more business acumen!
Molecular imprinting for sustainable downstream processing of biopharmaceuticals
Assessing the production of diagnostic proteins in plant cell cultures
An express route to biopharmaceutical production
A machine learning poly-omics classifier to improve protein production in CHO cells
Scientific exchange visit boosts separation technologies collaboration
Speeding up and slowing down: altering translation speed to enhance protein yield
Hijacking intracellular storage bodies to produce difficult to express proteins
Developing a novel fluorescence-based biopharmaceutical quality control technology
Design & testing of a membrane photobioreactor for advanced biologic production
Collaborative development of glycolipid separation technology to reduce costs
BioProNET funding drives the use of motor proteins for nanopore DNA sequencing
BIV funding grows algae bioprocessing collaboration
BIV funding lights up collaboration on fluorescent protein expression in microalgae
PoC study shows protein synthesis errors can cause activity losses in recombinant protein
Warwick and JEOL Strike Gold in Electron Microscopy Collaboration
Dynamic partnership aims to reduce cell harvest time
Cobra and Lancaster partnership helps unravel new analytical tool for DNA topology
Collaboration creates a recipe for success in cell-free protein synthesis
Edinburgh and Recyclatech Join Forces to Recover Microbial By-Products
Sandpit Meeting Builds Collaboration Workshop
Exchange visit funding seeds early career researcher collaborations
Scissor technology cuts out a collaboration between Bath and Arecor