Six bioprocessing innovators have successfully completed the inaugural Testa Challenge 2020. Held over an intensive week in the Testa Center located at Cytiva´s Uppsala site, a unique biomanufacturing scale-up facility, the Testa Challenge aims to allow start-ups, research groups and companies from around the world to run and validate their innovative ideas and products in a real life industrial bioprocess environment.
The 2020 challenge required entrants to show how their product or service would improve a real-life start to finish bioprocess run in the Testa facility by producing and purifying a dAb domain antibody fragment. Entrants could concentrate on the whole process or any of the five key stages:
• Production of dAb in E.coli in bioreactor
• Release of dAb to periplasm under heat treatment
• Clarification and concentration of dAb using cross flow filtration
• Purification of dAb using affinity chromatography
The Testa Center aims to repeat the Challenge in 2021 and hopes to announce a call for entries in Spring 2021.