Bioreactor Evaluation Toolkit (BET)

BET facilitates the incremental development of an increasingly sophisticated yet accessible modeling platform for wide use by bioprocess engineers.

The BET MVP illustrates the BET SKELETON concepts of incremental and accessible.

The BET MVP is accessible in the following ways. Anyone with a web browser can use it. Use is self-explanatory without requiring climbing steep learning curves. In particular, the underlying OpenFOAM application has a steep learning curve: users don’t need to know anything about how to build meshes for OpenFOAM or how to invoke the application. Amazon Web Services provides the computational power and also has a steep learning curve: users don’t need to learn their way around AWS. 

The BET MVP is just the first incremental step in building a tool that has ever-increasing utility. Being open-source allows the broader community of computational scientists to build upon the MVP. Being fueled by the CMMC means there is a community of practice around BET from the get-go: there are scientists and engineers in the CMMC who can answer users’ questions, take BET a step further by integrating additional features, CAD models, and, ultimately, cell models into the platform.

The BET thesis is that a transmission coupling model producers with simulation consumers is a missing link needed to accelerate progress in cultivated meat. The BET MVP begins to test this thesis with minimal upfront investment. Where it goes from there will depend upon the conversations the MVP stimulates between those producers and consumers.


The output of those conversations will be project ideas that advance the capability of BET. Where the MVP is envisioned as the skeleton of the platform, those projects will add BET FLESH to the bones


INDUSTRY APPLICATION AND BENEFITS

Facilitates scaling by providing an open-access platform to simulate various bioreactor designs to save time and money.

CURRENT STATUS

Ongoing

FUNDING SUPPORT

Cell Metabolics

OBJECTIVES

To achieve our overall objective of creating a pig GEM and tissue-specific GEMs for muscle and fat cells, we will:

  1. Develop a GEM of Sus scrofa using the publicly available genome sequence and metabolic pathway databases. Further, constrain the GEM to create tissue-specific models based on transcriptomic data collected from primary pig cell lines.

  2. Collect experimental data on biomass composition and growth rates in commercially available serum-free medium (from Van Heron Labs) to be used to develop the objective function in the flux balance analysis model (FBA). Validate/Test model predictions by directly measuring intracellular fluxes and performing spent media analysis of cells grown in serum-free medium.

  3. Identify, engage with and replicate objectives 1-2 for a cultured meat company.

PROJECT PARTNERS

Industry Application and Benefits

Help to develop cost-effective media formulations

Current status

Ongoing (extended the research to other species)

Funding Support

Shear Stress

New manuscript below!

PROJECT PARTNERS

Industry Application and Benefits

Understand the shear-stress of microcarriers better

CURRENT STATUS

Final manuscript completed

FUNDING SUPPORT

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Scale Down

Project PLAN

The ongoing “CMMC Scale-Down Project” aims to answer the research question. The project is planned for two phases, with the first phase slated for completion in March 2023.

Phase 1 aims to answer the research questions using CFD to understand the distribution of oxygen in the well plate. Phase 2 introduces cells to model how these cells interact within the system.

PROJECT PARTNERS

Industry Application and Benefits

Better understanding of dissolved O2 consumption

Current status

Used by Merck for in-house experiments on scale-down

FUNDING SUPPORT

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Multi-Scale Bioreactor

OVERVIEW

Integrating agent-based modeling with computational fluid dynamics to predict biomass outcomes in bioreactors to form a generally applicable computational pipeline. We apply this pipeline to stirred tank bioreactors and recapitulate the biomass production as a function of impeller speed presented in the literature. We also apply this pipeline to model the behavior of cells that are seeded in an IBIDI flow chamber, a controlled system that will generate crucial experimental data for the development of models of cell behavior under shear stresses induced by fluids.

PROJECT PARTNERS

Industry Application and Benefits

  • Opensoure

  • Advancement to design better agitation & shear prosthesis for designing bioreactor

Current status

  • Used & tested by different cultivated meat startups

  • Fostered by research for higher impact

Funding Support

To learn more