complete basics – Bioprocessing Explained

In your exams/quizzes you might come across questions that ask you to define certain terms, so I’ve included a list of textbook definitions for each term that you might need to define.

Biotechnology-related terms

Bioprocessing: The cultivation and use of living cells to for biological material or processes for medical or commercial purposes. A branch of biotechnology, often used for development of manufacturing processes.

Biotechnology: Commercial techniques that use living organisms, or substances derived from living organisms, to make/ modify a product. This does not include agricultural/ranching unless genetic engineering has been used.
–Industrial biotechnology: The use of living cells/and or their enzymes to produce or process commercial and industrial products. Usually it is cheaper than using traditional methods (i.e. extraction or catalysis).

Bioengineering/ Biomedical Engineering: The application of engineering principles to biological or biomedical products.
Medical Biotechnology: Medicine derived from the use of genetics, cell biology and other sciences.
Bio-pharmaceuticals: Biologically significant compounds that are used to treat human disorders. This is different from pharmaceuticals because they are not chemically synthesised i.e insulin. Does not include compounds directly extracted from tissue.
Regenerative Medicine: Any therapy that induces regeneration of an organ or tissue in the case of disease, injury or developmental defects.
Tissue Engineering: The use of engineering and biological principles to create a viable substitute for an organ, with the aim of restoring, maintaining or improving the function or an organ or tissue.
Biochemical Engineering: The use of bio-catalysts to produce a desired chemical transformation. Extends off chemical engineering.

Bioprocessing-specific terms

Upstream Processing: The mass manufacture of a desired product using cell cultivation processes.
Downstream Processing: The isolation, purification and formulation of a product from cell broth to form the final product format.
Formulation: Techniques used to generate the final product form from the bulk product. The final product form is ready to be used commercially/ medicinally, or to be stored and transported.
Quality control: Ensuring the product quality, safety, and efficacy are maintained within a certain range that meet the Good Manufacturing Practice standards set by the FDA.
Unit operations: Individual steps in a process that change or separate components of the cell broth. For example: centrifugation, filtration.

I will go over the bioprocessing terms in more detail, in their own sections as they are topics of their own, but I hope this is useful for you guys when you are cramming/ need a reminder!

So, we know that bioprocessing means producing something by using living cells.

Bioprocessing can be used to make hundreds of products from antibiotics and vaccines, to cell & gene therapies, to biofuels, to commercial products like sweeteners (Aspartame) or meat substitutes (Quorn).

But how does a bioprocess actually work?

Typical chemical processing

Normally, when you are making a product chemically, you have a process that looks like this:

a typical chemical process flowsheet involving a catalyst and substrate mixed in a reactor to produce a product

Of course, this is very simplified. But the point is that you put some stuff together, you put it in a reactor, chemical reactions occur and you get new stuff (your product).

How bioprocessing is different

In bioprocessing, your product is formed by living cells. In other words, the cells are your mini-reactors. Your job as an engineer or a scientist is to make sure that the cells have the optimal conditions to produce the desired product. For example, cells would need enough oxygen and a nice temperature – not too cold but not too hot.

Hence a cell could be pictured like a bioreactor:

the cell factory: using cells to catalyse reactions

So, you give A and B to the cell, these could be glucose and oxygen for example, and it produces P – your product. Cool, right?

In reality, you have to take care of a lot more things than A and B, and your cell will produce a lot more that just P.

A more realistic schematic:

a more realistic 'cell factory' depicting multiple components entering and leaving the cell

Two things to notice here:

There are a lot of factors to take care of to make sure the cells have a good environment to make product in.
There are a lot of things a cell produces apart from the product – these need to be removed from the final formulation.

These two considerations give rise to the two main parts of a bioprocess: upstream and downstream.

Upstream and Downstream

Upstream processing refers to the part of the process from picking the correct cell type, to cultivating it, to growing it and making it produce the things you want it to produce.

Downstream processing is concerned with everything that follows after your product is formed. This includes all the isolation and purification steps that are needed to separate the product from everything in the mixture, as well as the formulation of the product from a container of cloudy liquid into a sealed package that can be distributed.

Upstream are downstream are described in more depth in the “Upstream processing” and “Downstream processing” categories.

Tag: complete basics

Definitions of biotech-specific words