On March 23rd the Good Food Institute announced that the CMMC has been awarded one of their coveted Competitive Research Grants! Over the next two years, we will be developing computational models of novel bioreactor designs.
In anticipation of the work, Merck, KGaA, Darmstadt, a CMMC partner, has also funded a six-month proof-of-concept to accelerate development of the core modeling techniques required.
We are excited to get started! The work will be done by a carefully selected team of modelers in close collaboration with our industrial partners and under the lead of Dr. Simon Kahan. We aim to use the resulting models to run virtual experiments to evaluate and optimize bioreactor performance.
Left: Kaiser, Stephan & Löffelholz, Christian & Werner, Sören & Eibl, Dieter. (2011). CFD for Characterizing Standard and Single-use Stirred Cell Culture Bioreactors. 10.5772/23496.
Center: Copyright Biocellion SPC.
In this project we propose to undertake novel and holistic modeling that integrates cell biology, physico-mechanical properties (e.g. adherence, elasticity, susceptibility to shear forces) and computational fluid dynamics. With the integration of these techniques into a multiscale whole-system model, we hope to get a better understanding of which reactor design is best-suited to achieve the high density requirements of cultivated meat production. Contact us to learn more.