According to McKinsey, synthetic biology could be worth up to $4 trillion a year over the next ten to 20 years, with use cases ranging from what we eat and wear, to the medicines we take, to the fuels and construction materials we use. However, growth of these pioneering applications is being held back by costly R&D, making it difficult for SynBio innovators to scale quickly and reach a competitive price point with incumbents. For example, the R&D cost to bring a new alt protein product to market ranges in the millions of pounds. For biopharmaceutical products, this can easily run into the billions. Clearly, driving down cost in this sector requires a new approach.
The challenge
Multus is a biotechnology company that attempts to reduce prohibitive costs in industrial biotech applications such as cultivated meat and pharma to pass these savings onto its customers. It accelerates the production of ingredients to make bioprocesses scale-up faster and cheaper and manages the supply chain to deliver reliable, affordable media to cultivated meat companies. However, its ingredients are expensive, costing millions of dollars per gram. As such optimising processes and reducing R&D costs is integral to competitive advantage.
New Wave Biotech offers modelling software that combines artificial intelligence with mechanistic modelling in a hybrid approach to optimise processes in biomanufacturing. It focuses specifically on optimising downstream processing in order to help these companies scale better, faster and smarter. This is an area that makes up a big part of R&D costs for synbio companies, yet hasn’t traditionally been a large area of focus.
Multus were looking to ramp up commercialisation and wanted to optimise downstream processes which formed a big part of their R&D cost base. New Wave was identified by Multus as a way to validate and improve its purification system performance for growth factors and co-develop key functionalities.
The solution
New Wave began by designing a work package for Multus based on their needs, such as target production scale and quality, and accounting for issues such as protein fouling. Following kick-off meetings, New Wave modelled Multus’ processes and uploaded existing experimental data on their Bioprocess Foresight platform. This allowed them to create a baseline of data from which to optimise. Multus and New Wave then ran four cycles of optimisation and experimentation. In each cycle, the Bioprocess Foresight platform simulated their process and generated optimised parameters for Multus to test, with the resulting experimental data uploaded for further optimisation.
Since there are variations in upstream outputs, New Wave's software provided downstream processing parameters that were specifically adapted to take into account the output/yield of specific batches. This means the DSP parameters were not just optimised for the process, but for each specific batch. Another key benefit of New Wave’s software is its ability to optimise multiple processes simultaneously, something Multus had not expected to be possible. Multus and New Wave were in constant communication, meeting weekly to update on progress and troubleshoot problems.
“With New Wave we have been able to create an 8.6X increase in yield and speed up R&D within a year, which is impressive. As a young company, it was really important for us to have strong support beyond a switchboard number and New Wave were always on hand to answer questions and tackle challenges. Together we were really able to test the capability of the platform and learned a lot in the process. On top of that, New Wave’s team is a fantastic group of people who I really enjoyed working with and would relish the chance to work with again.” - Brandon Ma, Senior Scientist at Multus
The benefits
By the end of the project Multus successfully reduced its production costs by 55% using its new optimised process harnessing New Wave’s hybrid modelling software. Because New Wave’s software mixes mechanistic modelling and AI, it meant that they didn't need a lot of data - they were able to achieve this result with only eight datasets. More broadly, the business was able to eliminate unviable processes from the start, accelerate R&D, lower development costs and ultimately help improve their unit economics.
💰 55% cost reduction, bringing production to commercially competitive levels 📈 8.6X increase in product recovery ⏳ 37.4% reduction in processing time 🧪 More than doubled product concentration |
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As a team of scientists, it was important for Multus to understand the possible scenarios of using different processes as well as those already in place. Not only does the solution provide users with a holistic view of their process, it provides actionable insights to identify R&D hotspots, and the ability to virtually test unlimited possibilities to understand the likely outcomes. Using predictive modelling and Multus’ baseline data, New Wave was able to identify a route whereby Multus could reduce processing time by 37.4%, considerably faster than solely using its existing processes.
The optionality of the platform has also enabled Multus to add new functions to improve its model - for example, options for optimising concentration and dealing with membrane fouling to improve product quality. In future Multus is interested in applying the process developed with New Wave to different product lines and using New Wave's new Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) functionality to better understand costs and improve the business.
“Combining AI and real-world data collection to produce cheaper and more scalable growth media ingredients helps us put our customers one step closer to making widely available and affordable cultivated meat a reality.” - Cai Linton, CEO and Co-Founder at Multus
Read more about our Downstream Process Optimisation technology, join our webinar on how to reduce costs through DSP optimisation or get in touch to see how we can help you too.
About Multus
Multus specialises in growth media development and supply for cultivated meat companies. The company uses a groundbreaking combination of artificial intelligence, high-throughput lab automation and manufacturing to develop and supply high-performance growth media quicker, cheaper, and more safely. Companies partner with Multus to accelerate product development and make breakthroughs towards affordable and profitable scale-up. For more information, reach out to info@multus.bio.