Development and commercialisation of a sustainable, energy efficient and scalable bioprocessing technology to enable sustainable cell-based manufacturing

ended

It is widely reported all over the world that primary recovery of cells from bioreactor systems are currently underserved by the existing technologies of filtration, flocculation and centrifugation. This is due to both the volumes of liquid required for economical production and the number of cells or particles suspended in them. Where these biological cells can produce an enormous range of products such as medicine, food, cosmetics, pigments, nutritional supplements, plastics and fuel; the industries active with this sustainable method of production are burdened by stagnant and inefficient technologies for the harvesting of these cells. We, uFraction8 Limited, have developed a technology 'HuMBLES' designed to address this need for a scalable, low energy primary recovery solution. Using massively multiplexed modular microfluidic arrays,HuMBLES is readily scalable to address the needs of bioprocessing industry. Leveraging the ability to scale microfluidics throughput out of the lab and into industry promises, this Phase 1 project is focused at exploring the techno-economic feasibility of using multiplexed microfluidic arrays to for harvesting of microbial cell cultures to enable sustainable bioproduction. Successful development and commercialisation of HuMBLES will enable the economic production of goods using sustainable cell based manufacture, hence transforming industry to the great benefit of the environment.