Bioprocess engineering uses the capabilities of microorganisms to produce useful biological materials. Especially, bioprocess engineering has met the growing global need for large amounts of recombinant proteins such as monoclonal antibodies, cytokines, vaccines and technical enzymes. To achieve the full potential of biotechnological production methods, different culture technologies and efficient product recovery steps have to be established to generate safe and reproducible materials at reasonable cost.

Our current activities are mainly focused on microbial production of biopolymers and recombinant proteins. We help our partners to predict how complex the production process will be for a given biomaterial using our know-how and infrastructure. Cost, quality and convenience are important considerations as well.

We are currently producing a number of biomaterials with the aim of increase overall productivity. Production occurs in the bioreactor (1-12 L scale). Production is optimized via biological and process engineering strategies.

Contact:

Dr. Qun Ren, Group leader Bioprocesses
Qun.Ren@empa.ch
Tel.: +41 (0)58 765 76 88