Microbial Development

Microbial Upstream Development (USP) Services

The objective of upstream process development is to produce a robust and scalable process for the preculture and fermentation process fitting within SynCo’s production facilities while maximizing productivity. Preferably a target product amount is agreed before development work is started to assess the practical and economic feasibility of the developed process.

SynCo’s process development team has extensive experience with a wide range of bacteria, including Biosafety Level 1 (BSL-1) and Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) pathogens. This experience enables us to handle a wide range of microbial production systems, such as:

  • Escherichia coli                                             
  • Pseudomonas fluorescens                 
  • Corynebacterium diphtheriae           
  • Neisseria meningitidis (group A, C)             
  • Bordetella pertussis
  • Lactococcus lactis
  • Lactobacillus acidophilus
  • Oxalobacter formigenes
  • Bifidobacterium lactis
  • Bifidobacterium longum

Core competencies in microbial USP development using 5 – 20 L glass bioreactors are:

  • Full fermentation development
  • Optimization of developed fermentation processes
  • Development of feed strategies
  • Development of primary recovery
  • Process characterization (part of process validation)

Microbial Downstream Development (DSP) Services 

An effective DSP strategy is critical to delivering a robust and scalable process, with appropriate quality and acceptable cost. The different properties of the molecules produced and the environment from which they are to be purified mean that each process is unique with its own challenges.

The development of the downstream process will start with the understanding of physicochemical properties of the product molecule. SynCo exploits these physicochemical properties to quickly understand the feasibility of certain purification methods and consequently reducing the number of options to be investigated experimentally. After theoretically narrowing down the options, experimental works will be carried out to investigate the purification techniques that are highly likely to be efficient for this product molecule. At SynCo, this approach has been found to be efficient and minimizes the experimental effort and consequently shortens the downstream process development timelines. 

Core competencies in microbial DSP development are:

  • Selection of membrane technologies
  • Cell disruption (like e.g. homogenization)
  • Chromatography
  • Affinity
  • Ion exchange
  • Size exclusion/ gel filtration
  • Hydrophobic interaction/reversed phase
  • Gradient purification
  • Centrifugation

If you are interested in learning more about SynCo's process development services, please do not hesitate to contact us or to download our factsheet.

Services