Our goal
Small-scale fermentation runs are typically 250ml – still too big for high-throughput. And they are run in very expensive systems. That’s fine if you’re a pharma company, but it’s not good at all in industrial biotech. We set ourselves the challenge to build a custom scale-down fermentor array for high-throughput, low-cost testing of our strains.
How did we do it?
Partnering closely with the Manufacturing Futures Lab at University College London we built an array of 24 scale-down fermentors with a working volume of 10ml. To optimise the performance of the fermentors for our microbes, we designed, built and tested custom aeration strategies and baffles, aiding media mixing and promoting growth.
Together, our fermentation and data science teams optimised sensors and data read-outs, allowing for monitoring through both inline and sampling strategies.
Multiple microbes were run through the fermentors in batch, fed-batch and continuous operating modes. A sample of microbes were selected and grown in 5L in-house stirred-tank fermentors for performance validation.
The result
Image caption: Scale-down fermentor array system. Inset: example 10mL fermentor vessel.
We have now run 500 strains through our scale-down fermentor system and validated performance to in-house 5L stirred-tank fermentors. These datasets form the foundation of our Predictive Scaling module in bio:drive, allowing us to identify the strains that will perform best at industrial scale.
Our scale-down array will soon be scaled up to 100 vessels, so we can test fermentation strategies for even more microbes at low costs.