Engineering

Warning: scientific jargon below!

Most of the major biologic medicines - drugs to treat things like arthritis and cancer - are manufactured in large bioreactors using cells. This process can take a long time and cells tend to behave differently in different sized reactors. 

I work on what is called cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS). Instead of using cells, we use a crude cell extract. This extract is created from cells that are cultivated for a short amount of time and it contains all of the necessary components for transcription and translation to occur - everything needed to get from DNA to our protein pharmaceutical product. 

We add a reaction mix to this extract that contains DNA for the product we want to make as well as other substances that aid in protein production, like building blocks like amino acids and nucleotides, energy sources for ATP regeneration, and salts. 

Once the extract and the reaction mix are combined, the CFPS reaction occurs. These reactions take much less time (a few hours) compared to cell-based manufacturing schemes (a few days). It also behaves more like a chemical reaction and scales linearly so that predictable yields can be achieved in a variety of reactor sizes.