The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project would be to reduce the cost of production of biologics by an order of magnitude through a novel bioreactor. Such a platform has the potential to reduce barriers to biologics-based treatments, through reduced costs of manufacture. It will also improve therapeutic effectiveness by providing high quality, personalized, and cost-effective production of bio-drugs. This reduced cost of manufacturing would help bring biologics for rare diseases to market. This I-Corps Project leverages fine spatiotemporal control over the cellular microenvironment for controlled mass and heat transfer and fluid dynamics to optimize the production of the target biomolecules and improve manufacturing of biologics for personalized medicine. The proposed solution is a Big Microfluid (BM) bioreactor.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
