Animal Cell Biotechnology

There is an increasing demand for new biopharmaceuticals. Biopharmaceuticals are for example monoclonal antibodies, certain hormones, blood clotting factors and vaccines. They are used against diseases like cancer, rheuma, polio, flu, Corona etc.. A major part of these biopharmaceuticals are complex compounds and proteins that cannot be made in classical production systems like E-coli, yeast and fungi, but can only be produced by mammalian cells and sometimes by insect cells, using the baculovirus expression vector system. In addition, mammalian cells are used for the in-vitro engineering of tissues like liver, skin, bone, cartilage, fat and muscle. The last two are used for the production of in vitro meat.
Animal cells originate from a multicellular organism. As a consequence they require complex media and due to lack of a cell wall are sensitive to shear. This has major consequences for media development and the design and scale-up of bioreactors. This course aims to give insight into the consequences of the specific biological features of animal cells on the design and scale-up of production processes for animal cells.
This course cannot be combined in an individual programme with BPE34806.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• explain why animal cells are required for the production of certain biopharmaceuticals;
• relate the main differences between cultivation of animal cells and micro-organisms like yeast and bacteria to their physiology;
• cultivate Chinese Hamster Ovary or insect cells in t-flasks, shake-flasks and a lab-scale bioreactor;
• design a bioreactor for animal cell cultivation based on shear forces and oxygen transfer;
• evaluate the relevance of different bioreactor and process types for animal cell culture;
• describe important aspects of cell physiology (metabolism, cell proliferation and death) and relate these to process design;
• understand and design a virus production process considering the relation between multiplicity of infection and time of infection and virus stability.

Mandatory Knowledge:
ZSS06100 Laboratory Safety
Assumed Knowledge:
BPE-22306 Basic Cell Factory Design