Bioprocessing: The fundamentals
The bioprocess is considered to be a very specific process that uses complete living cells or its components to obtain any desired products. These living cells include bacteria, chloroplasts, enzymes and similar category of living cells. The process involves transportation of their energy and their mass to many biological and environmental processes which is the basic of this productivity. Now these therapeutic cell manufacturing processes can be differentiated into two main processes termed as the upstream processes and the downstream processes. The upstream process is defined as the entire process from early cell isolation along with cultivation converting to cell banking and culture expansion of the cells till the stage of final harvest is reached. Whereas, the downstream process involves the processing of those cell masses from the upstream to meet quality and purity requirements as per need. This process involves cell disruption, purification and final polishing of the products.
The Two Processes
Upstream
The first process involved as stated above in Upstream involves the separation of cells. Here involvement of growing of cells and microbes take place. The steps also comprises of inoculum development, media development, improvement of those inoculum development by using genetical procedure (genetical engineering) along with growth kinetics involved into the process as well. This in return will improve the product development by a greater extend. This process is completed when the final harvesting of the cells are done.
Downstream
Once the Upstream process is completed, now the downstream part of the process starts. Here the separation of the biomass takes place by centrifugation or ultra-centrifugation. After it is over, the cell disruption is done which enables the product to get released. The solid-liquid state is separated here by the use of centrifugation or filtration process. Initial purification of metabolites takes place after concentration of broth takes place. Finally, de-watering and polishing of the metabolites takes place and finally the product is formulated and sent to the market for the consumers in a seal packed manner.
The bioprocessing engineering involved
Bioprocess engineering or also called as the biochemical engineering is considered to be a specialization field of chemical engineering or Biological engineering which deals in development and designing of equipment and processes for the manufacturing of agriculture products along with involvement of food, pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, polymers and chemicals as well. This engineering also involves study of different biotechnological processes used in industries used for quality large scale production on a whole.
The process involves use of bioreactors which comprises of a fermentation chamber for growing of organisms like bacteria, yeast and other such microbes but under controlled temperature and condition supporting their growth. The perfect example of this reactor’s involvement is found in pharmaceuticals, vaccines, antibodies and other such products.
The perfect application
This bioprocessing involves a wide variety of application field especially when we speak about biomedical research. The study of this field has gained great significance attaining advancements in the field of biomedical research which simply paved the way for manufacturing of innovative pharmaceutical products that has led to a better development and truly opened a new horizon of possibilities in the pharmaceutical field. This has truly been a significant achievement which involves different critical applications and manufacturing of certain products which have been never possible without the use of bioprocessing advancement.
In the coming days, bioprocessing will gain much more significance as compared to today and today’s achievements will simply mend the pathway for the betterment of this field in the future which in turn will certainly help our science to get more stronger and better like never before.