Two‐compartment versus one‐compartment processing: Comparison in respect to facility design and productivity for microbial recombinant protein production

Abstract

One‐compartment processing (OCP) includes cultivation of a microorganism in a single bioreactor. It is conventionally used for the production of heterologous proteins in Pichia pastoris. However, two‐compartment processing (TCP) (cultivation in a single reactor coupled to a plug flow reactor) has been proposed as a novel approach for the production of recombinant HRP. All possible process modes must be evaluated when a process is being designed. In this work, a simple methodology was used to evaluate different production scenarios. The methodology includes sizing of the main equipment to produce a certain amount of product. The calculations showed that TCP needed 40% smaller reactor volume, 20% smaller chromatography column diameter, and 40% less buffer consumption than OCP for the annual production of 8 kg HRP. In turn, implementation of TCP into a process, which was designed based on OCP, could increase the annual production up to 9 kg. In addition, it could improve the protein quality by factor of two. The methodology, presented in this work, provides a straightforward procedure to evaluate different production scenarios in terms of investment and revenue. It confirmed TCP as an attractive production mode for HRP.