8th BioProScale Symposium 2024 in Berlin

8^th BioProScale Symposium 2024 in Berlin

The 8^th BioProScale Symposium 2024 – Scaling Down and Up of Bioprocesses: Strategies, Tools and Process Performance was a very successful conference and took place on April 9-11, 2024 in Berlin. This symposium is an event on industrial scale bioprocessing with a long scientific tradition where experts from research & development and industrial practice in bioprocessing of pharmaceuticals, food, feed and renewables meet, exchange knowledge and ideas, and strengthen or built up their networks and collaboration projects.

Facts & Numbers
About 200 participants from 19 countries were registered for this event. The symposium consisted of 9 sessions with 30 scientific lectures and 7 plenary talks as well as 57 poster contributions. (All abstracts of the symposium including the posters can be found in the Abstract Booklet.)
Further, 13 exhibitors showed their products and services on the ground floor area:

In 2024, the program focused on the following topics:
Area 1: Scale up and industrial scale processes, including:
Process performance across scales and process modes, bioreactor/bioprocess modelling, description of cell and reactor heterogeneities at large scale, sustainability of bioprocesses
Area 2: Bioprocess scale down, including:
Scale down approaches, small (laboratory) scale simulators of industrial scale processes, scale related cell physiology and population heterogeneities, validation of scalability, high throughput bioprocessing concepts 
Area 3: Process-driven cell performance, including:
Analysis and modelling of cell populations, optimization and design of cell-cell and cell-bioreactor interactions, microbial co-cultivation
Area 4: Integrated bioprocesses, including:
Circular economy concepts, bioprocess coupling, continuous operation, integrating upstream and downstream operations across scales
Area 5: Process analytical technologies (PAT), including:
Sensor integration, data modelling fusion, PAT for faster scale down and up of bioprocesses

Aspects of bioeconomy, the efficiency of bioprocesses as well as alternatives for food and feed play an important role globally and were thus also part of all focus areas of the symposium 2024. In several talks, the challenges of designing sustainable and financially affordable processes were discussed:

On April 09, 2024 the poster session toook place. Over 50 presenters showed the audience their research, technical innovations, and results:

Poster and Lecture Awards
The organizers thank the Society of Chemical Industry for sponsoring the awards for the best talks and posters of young scientists.

Bio-PAT e.V. congratulates the following winners:

Poster prizes (2 x 1^st, 2 x 3^rd place):
1^st Lars Halle and co-authors (Research Center Jülich): „Microbially produced monomers for biopolymers: Bioprocess development for 2-oxoglutarate production with Corynebacterium glutamicum“ (P54)
1^st Jonas Barczyk and co-authors (University of Stuttgart): „Mimicking large-scale mixing times in a laboratory scale single multi compartment bioreactor“ (P03)
3^rd Philipp Pably and co-authors (Technical University of Denmark-DTU): „Potential of predictive model-based dissolved oxygen control for intermittent fed-batch processes“ (P27)
3^rd Eike Janesch and co-authors (Technische Universität Berlin): „Membrane-free dissolved hydrogen monitoring in hydrolytic and methanogenic bioprocesses“ (P22)

Lecture prizes:
1^st Luisa Blöbaum (Bielefeld University): „Robustness of microbial functions in dynamic environments: a microfluidic approach“ (L14)
2^nd Tolue Kheirkhah (Technische Universität Berlin): “Morphology control for supporting scalability of Aspergillus niger cultures“ (L07)
3^rd Ryan Rautenbach (Hamburg University of Technology): „Resolved particle Lattice-Boltzmann Large Eddy Simulation in a 15,000 L bioreactor to mimic Lagrangian sensor particles“ (L05)

The following Bio-PAT members contributed to the symposium:

• As exhibitors: ANiMOX GmbH, BlueSens gas sensor GmbH, Knick Elektronische Messgeräte GmbH & Co. KG, Celltainer Biosolutions GmbH, represented by BIONET
• With talks:
  • 09.04.2024 at 16:25: Morphology control for supporting scalability of Aspergillus niger cultures (Tolue Kheirkhah, Chair of Bioprocess Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin)
  • 10:04.2024 at 10:15: Small scale models for process intensification: How to migrate a months-long perfusion process to intensified fed-batch (Lena Tholen – FyoniBio GmbH)
  • 10.04.2024 at 15:10: Workflow automation for reproducible high-throughput cultivations (Lucas Kaspersetz, Chair of Bioprocess Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin)
  • 11.04.2024 at 11:10: Production of PUFAs from dark fermentation effluent with Schizochytrium limacinum SR21 (Simon Täuber, Chair of Bioprocess Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin)
  • 11.04.2024 at 11:35: Bioprocess optimization for lactic and succinic acid production from a pulp and paper industry side stream (Agata Olszewska-Widdrat, Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy)

• With posters:
  • Biophotonics Diagnostics GmbH: P31: Real-time analysis of multicomponent bioprocesses using Raman spectroscopy and RAMANMETRIX^(TM) – Jörg Weber
  • BlueSens gas sensor GmbH: – Nils Arto
  • Versuchs und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin (VLB) e.V.:
  • Chair of Bioprocess Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin with the KIWI-biolab:
    P06: Challenges of bioprocess scale-down on an automated Platform – Linda Lantian Cai
    P22: Membrane-free dissolved hydrogen monitoring in hydrolytic and methanogenic bioprocesses – Eike Janesch
    P23: Investigating signal attenuation in raman spectra of bacterial fermentations – Christoph Lange
    P26: Robust tube-based MPC for controlling bioprocesses under uncertainty – Niels Krausch
    P30: Enzyme-Mediated Exponential Glucose Release: A Model-Based Strategy for Continuous Defined Fed-Batch in Small-Scale Cultivations – Annina Kemmer
    P33: Data Management in Automated transdisciplinary laboratories – Simon Seidel
    P34: Silicon-Based Photonic Biosensors for Label-Free Detection of Microorganisms – Philipp Schrenk
    P39: Development of a non-canonical amino acid-labeled [NiFe]-hydrogenase production system in Escherichia coli – Qin Fan
    P40: Heterologous production of an active hydrogenase using lactose-based autoinduction – De La Fuente Kratzborn Francisco
    P41: Bioprocess development to produce a hyperthermostable S-methyl-5′-thioadenosine phosphorylase in Escherichia coli – Julia Schollmeyer
    P48: Purine nucleoside antibiotics: recent synthetic advances harnessing chemistry and biology – Jonas Motter
    P49: Biocatalytic nucleobase diversification of 4’-thianucleosides and de novo RNA synthesis detection with 5-ethynyl-4’-thiouridine in proliferating HeLa cells – Sarah von Westarp
    P52: Substituting raw materials: Animal by-product streams for polyhydroxyalkanoate production – Saskia Waldburger

The 8^th BioProScale Symposium 2024 was concluded on April 11 with a lab tour. Some participants visited the Chair of Bioprocess Engineering with its pilot plant and the KIWI-biolab:

The pilot plant consists of stainless steel bioreactors from 1L to 100L and a 200 L CELL-tainer single use system for pilot-scale production, a
Flonamics automatic sampling system and cutting-edge process analytical tools (PAT, e.g. in-situ / in-line technologies for particle / cell analysis, namely Photon Density Wave spectroscopy and SOPAT microscopy). Also new approaches for process monitoring systems are developed.
At KIWI-biolab the team is pioneering the development of innovative bioprocesses through automation, AI integration and advanced analytics. During the lab tour they shared insights, discussed potential collaborations, and explored how the expertises can complement each other.

The 8^th BioProScale Symposium 2024 was jointly organized by the Technische Universität Berlin, Chair of Bioprocess Engineering, the Institute for Biotechnology and Fermentation in Berlin (IfGB), the BioProScale e.V. and Bio-PAT. e.V.
More information about the organizers:
BVT, TU Berlin
VLB Berlin e.V.: LinkedIn, Facebook
Bio-PAT e.V.: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

Pictures by Prof. Peter Neubauer and Dr.-Ing. Anika Bockisch

The next BioProScale Symposium will take place in 2026!
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