This section of a
serpentine channel reactor shows the parallel reactor and feeder channels
separated by a
nanoporous membrane. At left is a single nanopore viewed from the side;
at right is a
diagram of metabolite exchange across the membrane.
(December 30, 2015) Lives
of soldiers and others injured in remote locations could be saved with a
cell-free protein synthesis system developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak
Ridge National Laboratory.
The device, a creation of a team led by Andrea Timm and
Scott Retterer of the lab’s Biosciences Division, uses microfabricated
bioreactors to facilitate the on-demand production of therapeutic proteins for
medicines and biopharmaceuticals. Making these miniature factories cell-free,
which eliminates the maintenance of a living system, simplifies the process and
lowers cost.
“With this approach, we can produce more protein faster,
making our technology ideal for point-of-care use,” Retterer said. “The fact
it’s cell-free reduces the infrastructure needed to produce the protein and
opens the possibility of creating proteins when and where you need them,
bypassing the challenge of keeping the proteins cold during shipment and
storage.”
ORNL’s bioreactor features elegance through a permeable
nanoporous membrane and serpentine design fabricated using a combination of
electron beam and photolithography and advanced material deposition processes.
This design enables prolonged cell-free reactions for efficient production of
proteins, making it easily adaptable for use in isolated locations and at
disaster sites.
From a functional perspective, the design uses long
serpentine channels integrated in a way to allow the exchange of materials
between parallel reactor and feeder channels. With this approach, the team can
control the exchange of metabolites, energy and species that inhibit production
of the desired protein. Through other design features, researchers extend
reaction times and improve yields.
“We show that the microscale bioreactor design produces
higher protein yields than conventional tube-based batch formats and that
product yields can be dramatically improved by facilitating small molecule
exchange with the dual-channel bioreactor,” the authors wrote in their paper,
published in the journal Small.