September 19, 2014 Rentschler presentation at The Sixth Annual Bioprocessing Summit in Boston

Highlights of the latest conference in Boston

From 18 to 22 August 2014 Rentschler attended The Sixth Annual Bioprocessing Summit in Boston organized by Cambridge Healthtech Institute. The Summit brought together a record-breaking 700+ attendees from 31 countries. Visitors came from both Small Biotechs as well as Big Pharma and service providers. They met for 5 days of inspiring presentations and discussions about practical solutions for today's bioprocess challenges.

The meeting included 12 conference programs in four streams from “Cell Culture & Cell Line Development” over “Formulation & Downstream Processing” and “Analytical Development & Quality” to “Development of Next Generation Biologics” as antibody-drug-conjugates, bispecifics, fusion proteins, and cell and gene therapeutics. Main topics of the event were suitable bioreactors scales and fully disposable USP/DSP systems, high-concentration protein formulations, early analytical development for biotherapeutics and CMC strategies for antibody-drug-conjugates.

Rentschler was represented by Dr. Stefan Schmidt, Vice President DSP Production. His presentation under the heading “Opportunities and limits of disposables in non-platform processes” has been followed by more than 100 participants of the Cell Culture stream. Schmidt’s starting point was the fact that Single use systems are industry standard in platform processes. But current pipelines contain many novel fusion proteins. These molecules are difficult to manufacture due to low titer, lack of an affinity matrix or tendency to aggregate. In selected case studies Schmidt demonstrated when it is economically and technically reasonable to rely on single use, when a hybrid model is advantageous and when conventional approaches are preferable. He presented a modular approach for diverse types of fusion proteins in comparison to the typically used antibody platform. He concluded if one of the fusion partner dominates molecular properties fusion proteins can follow a platform process. If the same fusion partner is reused parts of the process can be kept. Disposables can easily be implemented into any type of process.

The participants came even after Presentation for additional questions and was impressed by Rentschlers capabilities.