Go With The Flow: How sustainable is the trend toward single-use systems Podcast

When it comes to biotech, both the academic and industry settings are crucial in developing novel medicines. Dr Brent Cezairliyan has experienced both sides of biotech, first through an academic career exploring bacterial pathogenesis, and now in his administrative role at Octagon Therapeutics. The company, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, focuses on autoimmune disease treatments. By developing targeted approaches to the inflammatory nature of the immune system, they hope their advances in biotech help future scientists navigate the field for years to come.

In this episode, we explore BIOVECTRA’s capabilities in antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) manufacturing, from complex conjugation chemistry to synthesis of highly potent payloads. We’ll also showcase how BIOVECTRA’s extensive experience in complex chemistries and specialized small molecule manufacturing gives them a unique perspective, strengthening their approach to ADC production and ensuring clients receive custom solutions across all project stages.

In this interview, we will talk about the typical developmental process of new vaccines and how the current Covid-19 situation influences the global vaccine developmental landscape.

Metabolic Flux Analysis (MFA) is a powerful technique used to characterize metabolic phenotype driving to improved productivity in biomanufacturing. MFA is most powerful when absolute concentrations of the metabolic intermediates are measured, but doing so in practice is often impractical due to inherent limitations of conventional absolute quantitation by mass spectral analysis. Recently, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have been applied to solving the problem of broad, untargeted, absolute quantitation in liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). These new approaches extend readily to the determination of absolute concentrations of stable isotopically-labeled metabolic intermediates, offering a new tool for MFA. Dr Sam Yenne from Metalytics Inc., a company that specializes in the science of metabolic flux, has recently assessed and adopted Pyxis, a new tool for absolute quantitation of raw LC-MS data. Dr Yenne describes MFA, its utility in biopharmaceutical development, associated challenges and how Pyxis impacts those challenges.

In this interview, we will talk about the advantages of changing from shake flasks to stirred-tank bioreactors, but also about the problems that can occur and things that have to be considered, in order to ensure proper cell growth.

While still considering himself a fundamental basic scientist, Samir Ounzain is embracing the biotech industry trend of merging academic research and biotechnological drug development. In this episode, Ounzain talks about his path from a dark theater as a kid watching Jurassic Park to the lab studying the dark matter of the human genome – and eventually to the founding of Haya Therapeutics, a biotech startup aiming to discover and develop safe and effective, tissue- and cell-selective, genome-based therapies for fibrotic diseases.