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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/T005378/1
Title: Regenerative BioCrystallisation
Principal Investigator: Yang, Dr H
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Chemical Engineering
Organisation: Loughborough University
Scheme: Standard Research - NR1
Starts: 01 October 2019 Ends: 15 April 2023 Value (£): 253,017
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Design Engineering Manufact. Enterprise Ops& Mgmt
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Manufacturing Healthcare
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Advances and breakthroughs in target-oriented biotechnology research are vital to the development of new biopharmaceutical products and treatments. Despite the increasing success in discovering protein-based medicines and progress on upstream bioprocess, manufacturing especially downstream bioseparation process at scale remains a significant challenge in the biopharmaceutical industry at present, such as (a) low through-put production, (ii) costly and complex downstream steps, and (iii) impurity and instability during the storage and transport. The bottleneck in downstream biomanufacturing limit the scaling up in downstream bioprocess, such as bioseparaton, limit the economic scale-up benefit from upstream transform to downstream, and, accordingly, limit the wide application of the advanced biopharmaceuticals to the patients, and limit the disease survival rates, such as cancer. Biocrystallisation is an alternatives to the current complex downstream bioseparation technology, such as multiple chromatography, which are high cost, low efficient and hard to scale up.

The vision here is to develop an interdisciplinary technology (bioengineering, bioseparation and biochemical engineering) de-bottleneck of downstream bioprocessing, integrating upstream (producing protein) and downstream bioprocess (biocrystallisation and bioseparation). Regenerative biocrystallisation leads to a novel and simplified biomanufacturing technology to directly grow biocrystal/protein crystals in vivo. The biocrystallisation inside cells ensure deliver 21st biopharmaceuticals with high purity and quality with low cost, high efficiency and easy to scale up. This technology is transformative, but there are with relatively high risks associated with this adventurous, original and ambitious project. Interdisciplinary experts will help to steer the project. The new scientific understanding in this project and the risks has the very real potential to deliver an new insight technology, and bring new insight into biomanufacturing inside cell.

This research will enable the PI and PDRA to develop interdisciplinary collaborations with existing EPSRC Centres of Excellence, UK biopharmaceutical industrial partners and academic groups internationally.
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Organisation Website: http://www.lboro.ac.uk