Prof. Florian Wurm, CSO, ExcellGene SA

Florian Wurm is a Biologist/Molecular Geneticist (University of Giessen, Germany) by training. He worked in industry (Behringwerke, Marburg and Genentech, San Francisco) for 15 years during the earlier parts of his career and has spend 2 years at Harvard University, Boston. In 1995 he was appointed Professor for Biotechnology at EPFL (Lausanne). In 2002 he started ExcellGene SA, Monthey, Switzerland. Florian holds the position of CSO and interim CEO at this company. Florian is member and past Chairman of the European Society of Animal Cell Technology. He has published more than 180 papers and holds more than 20 patents on protein expression in cultivated mammalian cells. During his career he has contributed to the generation of a number of high profile protein therapeutics which are sold today as "block-buster" products of the biopharmaceutical industry. 

Producing proteins in bioreactors with mammalian cells: From mgs to kgs, from academia to industry - a 25 year perspective. 

Antibodies,  antibody-fusion proteins and other high-value proteins are produced now in kg to ton quantities for the treatment of a small number of diseases, benefiting hundreds of thousands of affected patients. The unprecedented medical and commercial success of these molecules (sales of over 50 Billion US $/year)  has raised enormous interest in the biopharmaceutical research community, resulting in hundreds of new molecules to be explored for the same or other diseases.  A major bottleneck for bringing such promising protein candidates for treatment into the clinical setting is the amount of time and money required to manufacture even gram quantities of these under appropriate conditions with reproducible yield and high quality. Mammalian cells in bioreactors have been used and optimized over the last 25 years to produce these proteins with ever increasing yields. Today, gram/liter quantities of such proteins can be made in reactors of up to 20'000 Liter volume. However, each molecule is a new challenge and requires profound development efforts to obtain such highly productive production processes. The knowledge for such process development and establishment of manufacturing capacity is in the hands of few leading companies. The talk will cover the evolution of insights and processes during the last 2 decades and will also provide a view on the future in process sciences and manufacturing of antibodies and other recombinant antibodies made in mammalian cells in bioreactors. An emphasis will be given on fast, efficient and new production principles, such as large scale transient gene expression and the use of single use, disposable bioreactor systems. All of these are able to cut cost and to reduce time for moving a new expression vector to the reality of sufficient quantity of product for preclinical and clinical research, as well as for manufacturing for the market.  More inrormation...