Description: Small-footprint manufacturing is a disruptive and unique opportunity for distributed and mobile production capabilities suited to stakeholders interested in efficiently establishing biomanufacturing independence. Sunflower Therapeutics is a women-owned and led early-stage public benefit biotechnology company that has developed breakthrough, small-footprint protein production systems. Our unique systems utilize perfusion fermentation, a mode of continuous cultivation for eukaryotic microbes. The benefits of perfusion cultivation have been well demonstrated using mammalian cells and include a reduced manufacturing footprint, lower capital investment and ongoing operational costs, and increased flexibility, productivity, and product quality. At Sunflower, we have developed a single-use bench-top bioreactor for the automated, continuous production of proteins from eukaryotic microbes using perfusion–the Daisy PetalTM. We show that the Daisy PetalTM can be used for efficient continuous production of a variety of recombinant proteins by the yeast Pichia pastoris, including cytokines and hormones, subunit vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and other antibody-like products. Furthermore, we describe Sunflower’s automated end-to-end manufacturing technology: the Sunflower Dahlia™ System, which includes integrated modules for perfusion fermentation, straight-through chromatography, and tangential flow filtration.
Democratizing Biomanufacturing using Perfusion Fermentation
Organisation:
Ms. Laura Crowell
Laura Crowell is the Director of Research and Development at Sunflower Therapeutics PBC, a biotech startup focused on dramatically reducing the time and cost to develop and manufacture biologics for patients around the world. In her current role, Laura oversees ongoing efforts to develop the right-sized and efficient manufacturing approaches for protein-based therapeutics and vaccines using strain engineering, integrated process development, and automated multi-product facilities. Laura received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT and her B.S. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Tufts University. Her doctoral work accelerated process development for biologics on a small-scale, integrated, multi-product manufacturing platform. This involved the demonstration of an automated, small-scale biomanufacturing system for the rapid, end-to-end production of clinical quality biopharmaceuticals along with the development and optimization of processes for the integrated, straight-through purification of biologics. Laura has authored more than 10 scientific papers and patents.
