Liquid Pumps for Bio Pharmaceutical Applications

Bioprocessing is a process by which complete living cells and/or their components, for example, bacteria, enzymes, etc. are used to create products for everyday use. Bioprocessing is used to support biopharmaceutical drug development such as vaccines, therapeutic stem cell cultivation, or create chemicals such as biofuels.

Integral to biotechnology, bioprocessing is the basis of turning naturally occurring substances into useful industrial chemicals and medicines. Its use in creating next-generation biopharmaceutical products is becoming more and more popular.

Media and buffer preparationare integral steps of bioprocessing; the former is the first step of theupstreamstage where the media is transferred to the bioreactor, while the latter is introduced at the downstream stage to the mixture after the cells have been harvested.

Requirements

• Depending on the media used, flexibility in terms of flow capacity.
• Accurate, consistent, and controlled flow for continuous operation.
• Single-use applicability with zero cross-contamination.

Fermentation is the process of breaking down a substance to its simpler components in order to produce specific chemical and/or physical changes in the media. Fermentation occurs in vessels called Bioreactors (or Fermenters) that are designed to maintain an optimal environment for the organic material to be cultivated.

Requirements

• Very accurate and gentle, controlled flow to maintain cell integrity.
• Precise handling of feed, acid, base and anti-foam fluids.
• Single-use applicability with zero cross-contamination.

Cell harvestingis a critical step in connecting upstream media production with downstream purification, with the goal to recover the cells and cell debris efficiently and accurately without sacrificing the purity of the product. Transferring the media through filters relies on peristaltic pumps that offer flow accuracy and stability in a wide range of pressures and flow rates.

Requirements

• Accurate, consistent, and gentle flow of delicate cell media.
• Single-use applicability with zero cross-contamination.

The purification process separates those contaminants that resemble the product very closely in their physical and chemical properties. This step utilizes very sensitive and sophisticated equipment that recover the product based on affinity, size exclusion, reversed phase chromatography, crystallization and fractional precipitation. The polishing process is the final step that results in packaging the end-product in a form that is stable, easily transportable and convenient. Methods used to “polish” the product include crystallization, desiccation, and lyophilization.

Requirements

• Controlled, stable flow to feed media through filtration methods.
• Single-use applicability with zero cross-contamination.