Knowledge transfer partnerships
University collaboration helped develop pioneering new product
Company
TAP Biosystems (formerly The Automation Partnership)
Expertise
Department of Chemical Engineering
Amazing advances in biochemical engineering are paving the way for new medicines which could one day help cure a multitude of chronic diseases.
But a practical infrastructure to enable large-scale, economically-viable manufacture must first be established before these scientific discoveries can make a real difference to the world.
Loughborough University is working with private companies to ensure its expertise helps to build this new industrial landscape. TAP Biosystems is one such company - a world leader in the design and development of innovative automation for life science applications.
The company worked with the University through the Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme to obtain expert input into the development of a new advanced micro bioreactor system.
Dr Richard Wales, TAP’s Technology Director for the project, said: “Knowledge Transfer Partnerships provide a very effective approach for the transfer of the knowledge residing in our Universities into real industrial applications. The result is not only the immediate expert input but the on-going relationship that develops. TAP Biosystems’ links with academics at Loughborough will continue to be valuable.’’
The new product, called ambr™, was launched in February 2010. Enabling significant savings on materials and labour, ambr™ uses cost-effective, disposable micro bioreactors controlled by an automated workstation.
Impact
- Automated ambr workstations are now being sold across the world.
- The product was shortlisted for a prestigious IChemE Award in recognition of the technology’s contribution to improving bioprocessing efficiency.
- The ambr technology is currently in operation at a number of global antibody therapeutics companies, where it is being successfully used to optimise clone selection and enable new process development strategies.
- The ambr system is being evaluated by many other companies throughout the US and Europe to determine how it can reduce time and costs of using lab scale bioreactors in process characterisation.