Biopharmaceutical protein production using transgenic plant cell bioreactor processes offers advantages over microbial and mammalian cell culture platforms in its ability to produce complex biologics with simple chemically-defined media and reduced biosafety concerns. A disadvantage of plant cells from a traditional batch bioprocessing perspective is their slow growth rate which has motivated us to develop semicontinuous and/or perfusion processes. Although the economic benefits of plant cell culture bioprocesses are often mentioned in the literature, to our knowledge no rigorous techno-economic models or analyses have been published. Here we present techno-economic models in SuperPro Designer® for the large-s... More
Biopharmaceutical protein production using transgenic plant cell bioreactor processes offers advantages over microbial and mammalian cell culture platforms in its ability to produce complex biologics with simple chemically-defined media and reduced biosafety concerns. A disadvantage of plant cells from a traditional batch bioprocessing perspective is their slow growth rate which has motivated us to develop semicontinuous and/or perfusion processes. Although the economic benefits of plant cell culture bioprocesses are often mentioned in the literature, to our knowledge no rigorous techno-economic models or analyses have been published. Here we present techno-economic models in SuperPro Designer® for the large-scale production of recombinant butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), a prophylactic/therapeutic bioscavenger against organophosphate nerve agent poisoning, in inducible transgenic rice cell suspension cultures. The base facility designed to produce 25 kg BChE per year utilizing two-stage semicontinuous bioreactor operation manufactures a single 400 mg dose of BChE for $263. Semicontinuous operation scenarios result in 4-11% reduction over traditional two-stage batch operation scenarios. In addition to providing a simulation tool that will be useful to the plant-made pharmaceutical community, the model also provides a computational framework that can be used for other semicontinuous or batch bioreactor-based processes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
