Cultivation Of Aggressive Microbial Cultures Of Pichia And Bacillus

By Jason Brown, Paula Decaria, Nephi Jones, Tommy Smith, Dmitrij Bugajev, Juozas Šiurkus

Advances in single-use bioprocess technology have led to the rapid adoption of single-use bioreactors (S.U.B.s) across a broad range of applications within the biotechnology industry. However, the aggressive performance demands common in industrial microbiology have limited the conversion of traditional fermentation processes to single-use systems. To address the unique needs of microbial applications, we created the Thermo Scientific™ HyPerforma™ Single-Use Fermentor (S.U.F.) as the first truly scalable single-use stirred-tank reactor system utilizing proven scale-up principles (Figure 1). Offered for both 30 L and 300 L working volumes, both systems are designed to meet the most rigorous process demands of high-performance mixing and mass transfer. Existing fermentation production facilities can retrofit the S.U.F. in place of traditional stainless steel cleaning-inplace/ sterilization-in-place (CIP/SIP) fermentor vessels without modifying their procedures. As expression systems are moved to production volumes, they can easily be scaled from a benchtop fermentor (or flask) to the S.U.F. A significant benefit of the S.U.F. when compared to existing single-use offerings is that the product is specifically built for the microbial process and offers very efficient and simple technical transfer—the S.U.F. is not simply modified from existing cell culture reactors.