
Proteins and even tailor made ingredients can be produced by using precision fermentation technology. At WFBR they are looking for solutions to scale the technology.
Dr. Martijn Bekker, Expertise Leader Microbial Cell Factories:” We can scale these processes but there are significant challenges as industrial scaling isn’t a linear process. To solve this firstly we need to understand all the parameters that affect the industrial scale process. Local conditions like oxygen concentration, temperature and pressure may vary within the system.” High throughput screening technology is used to understand how the local environmental parameters affect the process. By combining this information with advanced real time monitoring tools the process is continuously steered as it is running at an industrial scale towards an optimal process.
Cost reduction
Furthermore cost reduction is a key factor for most of the industrial partners. Moving from batch type of fermentation to continuous fermentation can lower the costs. However continuous fermentation has its own challenges (buildup of mutations and contamination). Bekker: “We are currently building a body of knowledge on how to manage these issues to ensure that we can predict and prevent system failures.”
“In order for a process to make it at scale it needs to be cost-effective from the start,” says Sanne Wiersma, Project Leader Precision Fermentation. Titer, rate and yield are important factors to focus on. They should be monitored early on to investigate which has the greatest impact. The more complex the purification of the protein from the fermentation slurry, the more costly. More proteins mean easier purification. The purer the protein the lower the purification efforts. “Also the functionality (nutritional quality, bioactivity) and behaviour (smell, taste) of the protein should be assessed as early as possible”, says Laurice Pouvreau, expertise leader protein functionality. “We have a broad range of bioassays to assess this at small scale.”
Bron: Wageningen Food and Biobased Research