A miracle antidote in a test tube cannot cure the world if it is too expensive to produce. Too often the cost of producing sufficient quantities of a protein for commercial testing is one of the major sticking points for researchers trying to secure venture capital.

That’s why Dr Michael Cooney from Murdoch’s School of Engineering has developed a new pilot scale ‘fed-batch’ fermenter for researching DNA protein production.

When moving to production scale fermentation, the pharmaceutical industry currently sticks with the ‘batch’ production technique used in clinical testing. This requires researchers to invest in new and larger reactors, such as expanding production from a 100L to 500L.

However, according to Dr Cooney, ‘fed-batch’ processing can use the smaller reactors without losing the production rate of larger volumes.

“The difference with ‘fed-batch’ processing is that main nutrients are fed at a rate that controls the cell growth rate, and hence the tendency to produce inhibitory by-products. This way, we can obtain a biomass concentration of a much higher density than in ‘batch’ processing, in which all the nutrients are chucked in at the start,” said Dr Cooney.

Working with Dr David Berryman from the State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, Dr Cooney has been testing the fed-batch processing reactor’s ability to express a particular DNA protein from E. coli since the beginning of this year.

Dr Cooney, who designed the custom-made reactor, believes that it is unique in its versatility. “The modular based design enables the reactor to be adapted for other production techniques,” he said.

According to Dr Cooney, the most attractive feature of the fermenter is the computer automation.

“Everything from sensors to the rate of inlet gas is carefully controlled and data logged by the computer. My student, Wayne Johnson, has also developed a really useful and versatile program to run the reactor.”

“It’s great,” added Dr Cooney, “because I’ve spent my research career using these terribly limited control systems provided by fermenter manufacturers. Now we have the flexibility of measurement and control in a virtual world.”

It is Dr Cooney’s desire to work with other researchers at Murdoch who are hoping to eventually market their own proteins.

“I hope this system becomes a conduit for Murdoch’s biomedical researchers to capitalise on promising results, helping them scale up the test production of new proteins and collect the type of data necessary to approach industrial producers.”

Murdoch researchers hope to use this technology to optimise production of a variety of useful proteins, including vaccines and antigens that can detect particular antibodies.