This small business innovation research (SBIR) Phase I project is aimed at demonstrating the technical feasibility of building an automated system for the large-scale production of recombinant proteins. The design criteria is for a device that provides for low cost, high throughput production at bench-scale as well as having the flexibility for a fully automated commercial-scale production system. In the Phase I portion of the project, a point-to-point construction format will be used to model the concept and demonstrate the technical feasibility of coupling the upstream biomass production with the downstream protein purification into a seamless production system. A key enabling facet of the design concept is the integration of Athena's novel expression system for the production of recombinant proteins. The broader impacts of this research are for lower production cost of recombinant proteins. The production and purification of proteins remains a rate-limiting step for basic and applied research as well as for commercial production. The general approach for producing large quantities of recombinant protein involves multiple steps that are physically and functionally separated. Consequently, it is a labor intensive process that is not readily amenable to parallel or high throughput operations. One means of addressing this is by linking the processes together; yet no system is available where the cell culturing and protein purification operations are coupled into one integrated fully-automated system. The device envisioned here will solve this by allowing for the automated large-scale production of recombinant proteins in a seamless system. This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)
