The ABPDU: A Catalyst for the U.S. Biomanufacturing Sector

During the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco startup Caspr Biotech developed a testing kit that doesn’t require results to be analyzed in centralized laboratories with trained personnel and sophisticated equipment. But the company was only able to produce their key ingredient, a CRISPR Cas-12 enzyme, in tiny batches. ABPDU first scaled up Caspr’s fermentation process to their highly automated 250-milliliter bioreactor system, then successfully designed a fermentation protocol for 10-liter bioreactors. The insights generated by the 10-liter run allowed the company to further scale to commercial volumes, which are typically hundreds of thousands of liters.

Swiftscale Biologics, another startup, reached out to ABPDU for help scaling up their development and manufacturing platform for neutralizing antibodies, which are proteins produced by immune cells that allow the body to detect and combat pathogens. ABPDU worked with the company to increase its production volume 1,000-fold, which could then be used to generate enough product for clinical trials. Read more.

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