Upstream and downstream processes with physico – mathematical tools towards the development of bioprocesses for complex and novel biopharmaceuticals. Simplicity, feasibility, transferability and economics are criteria used to design processes that may find industrialization opportunities. Such criteria, design and process applications have been extended to vaccines (e.g. multivalent Influenza VLPs, retro-VLPs, HIG Gag-VLPs, ZIKV-VLPs, viral vaccines…) and viral vectors for gene therapy (e.g. adenoviruses, retroviruses, lentiviruses, AAVs,…), drawing from the expertise and research achievements of the other labs in the ACTU.

Optimization of mammalian and insect cells expression systems (stable or transient expression), evaluation of different bioreactor operation modes (e.g. fed-batch and perfusion), application of scale-down models for high-throughput screening, design of novel continuous purification processes, modelling towards biological and chemical process control, and scale-up for pre-clinical applications. More recently, metabolic systems biology (e.g. 13C tracer experiments for fluxome estimation and exometabolome profiling by 1H-NMR) has been assisting bioprocess development in areas such as cancer cell metabolism (e.g. lung and breast), brain cell metabolism in normal and pathological conditions, stem cell metabolism along cardiac and neural differentiation, and cell metabolic response to virus infection.

Keywords: Biopharmaceuticals, Vaccines, Virus, Proteins, Stem cells, Gene Therapy, Engineering, Process Development, GMP