February 17, 2016 Participation in 15th Annual PepTalk Protein Science Week 2016

Presentation regarding the cost constraints in therapeutic protein manufacturing

From 18th to 22th of January 2016 Rentschler attended the 15th Annual Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s PepTalk Protein Science Week in San Diego, United States. More than 1,200 participants from industry and academia take the opportunity to participate in diverse short courses, numerous lectures and manifold networking programs.
Rentschler was represented by Dr. Stefan Schmidt, Vice President Process Science and Production, who took over various functions: He was speaker and chairperson of a session in the “Protein engineering & development” stream.
His presentation under the heading “Manufacturing recombinant protein therapeutics under cost constraints” has been followed by more than 60 visitors. In the first part of his lecture a variety of downstream processes for complex Proteins was demonstrated. The possibilities of cost savings regarding the number of steps as well as the size of columns and the types of resins were discussed. The summarizing recommendation was replacing costly affinity resins, the use of disposables columns and reducing of the number of steps in platform processes.
In the second part he spoke about process simplification by use of generic buffers which are adoptable to all chromatographic steps. Cost savings resulting from the reduced number of buffer definitions and simplified logistics. Topic of the last part of his lecture was the scaling up of perfusion processes. In this part he presented cost-efficient models for the subsequent elaborate downstream process. Thereby he highlighted diverse scenarios regarding the available resources including manpower, suites and material costs. With a number of examples from fusion proteins to biosimilars, his case studies demonstrated successful process design, appropriate optimization strategies, and critical manufacturing parameters.