Assignment details

You work in research and development for a biopharmaceutical company and they have asked you to put together a report comparing production of recombinant human grown hormone (rhGH) by a bacterial and yeast system and to recommend which system you think is most likely to succeed commercially. You have been provided with the two research papers which are linked to below (make sure you can access these and please let us know if not).

The pdfs of these papers are also added to the assignment section on Canvas.
Your task is to read these papers and write a report (maximum 1000 words) comparing how they can be used for rhGH production including discussion of the following elements:

(i) Strains used and the steps involved in cell propagation (preparing seed cultures). Here you need to identify the strains and the steps required to prepare culture for inoculation at bioreactor stage. It is not expected that you go into detail on how the strains were developed.
(ii) Process parameters, media requirements, scale and bioreactor operation.
(iii) Fermentation performance
(iv) Overall process (you can mention ease of downstream processing, number of steps for example, but don’t need to go into comparison of the actual separation technologies unless specific advantages have been highlighted) and stage of development
(v) Discussion on which system you would recommend as being most likely to succeed commercially. Here you should also highlight any challenges in producing rhGH in microbial systems and expand to include any other
relevant details on choice of yeast or bacteria as production systems for biopharmaceuticals with support from suitable references.