Held in April at le Meriden Cambridge MA,
Now in its 10th year the forum ably illustrated the applicability of BioSolve Process to a wide range of challenges we face in bioprocessing. It was pleasing to see representatives from the Biopharm supply chain; from academics, consultant engineers, suppliers and manufacturers. All sharing experiences, challenges and the latest developments in the BioSolve Enterprise platform with a focus on content, optimisation tools and leveraging knowledge. Highlights from the meeting
- Our user community requested access to Unit operation models of supplier technologies. At the we launched a new service the “Supplier Showcase” the first technology to go into showcase is the GE Healthcare – ÄKTA™ pcc and BioProcess™ pcc available now (subject to GE Healthcare’s agreement). Access via the user portal
More technologies will be added over the coming months so watch out for further announcements
- You can now track process sustainability in BioSolve, using the high level metric developed by the ACS Green Chemistry Initiative using “Process Mass Intensity” A process output table generated when you run a model. Jack Gavin of Merck’s Environmental Sustainability CoE demonstrated how Merck use the PMI assess the environmental impact of mAb manufacturing and evaluate new technologies
- BioSolve Process now comes with Advanced Scenario Analysis which links the ability to automate the operation of BioSolve and collect data sets from each run. The power of this was illustrated by a talk by Dr Natarajan Ramasubramanyan (AbbVie, US) in his talk “Leveraging BioSolve for optimization through integration with Statistical and BI software applications”. This was based on a process development project he used DoE to set up the BioSolve runs and packaged the outputs for distribution in using web base business intelligence tools.
- Doug Sevon from Sanofi described how he used the Advanced Scenario Analysis to evaluate a Multi Product Process
- Changing direction again Ken Hamilton from Genentech described in his talk “Analysis of Economic Feasibility for Single Use facilities” on how they used BioSolve Process to analysis where single technology is best deployed in a complex supply chain that incorporates several legacy facilities.
- Suppliers were well represented looking at how they have used Biosolve to understand the impact of innovative new technologies, Pall (Jonathan Hummel) talked about their continuous platform, MilliporeSigma (Alex Xenopoulos) described the work they had done looking at optimised media. GE Healthcare (Jonathan Royce) described how they use Biosolve Process to understand the environmental impact of their technologies
There were many more interesting talks exploring the economics of vaccine manufacture, the implication of increasing titres on manufacturing and much more.
An important part of the User Forum is to gain feedback from Users on how they want to see the BioSolve platform evolve and to give insight into forthcoming developments and to identify shared challenges that we as an industry face.
- There was significant interest in the presentation on a major collaboration between Biopharm and the University of Manchester on “Extending BioSolve with a Flexible Evolutionary Optimization Tool” was described. This is funded by Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (http://ktp.innovateuk.org/). A task force of seven user companies was identified they will be involved evaluating and testing the optimisation tool.
- Finally there was discussion on the paucity of data relating to capital project benchmark and there is a strong desire to collect benchmark data and improve the capital estimation techniques and support data in BioSolve. A task force was established to develop and bring together both techniques and data.
In the forum energy and enthusiasm was evident throughout the meeting it is evident that the BioSolve software platform is providing real value to all participants in the bioprocessing sector covering all the major stakeholders. The value of its application is being seen when assessing new technologies and modalities such as continuous processing and cell therapy applications. At the end of the forum there was discussion on and direction given on its application to our digital future (manufacturing 4.0) so watch this space.
