ABSTRACT
With the maturation of antibody production technologies, both economic optimization and ecological aspects have become important. Continuous downstream processing is a way to reduce the environmental footprint and improve process economics. We compared different primary recovery, capture, and fermentation methods for two output-based antibody production scales: 50 kg/year and 1000 kg/year. In addition, a fixed fermentation volume case of 1000 L was analysed in terms of total cost of goods and process mass intensity as a measure of the environmental footprint. In our scenario, a significant amount of water can be saved in downstream processing when single use equipment is utilized. The overall economic and ecological impact is governed by the product titre in our perfusion (1 g/L) and fed-batch (4 g/L). A low titre in fermentation with similar downstream purification leads to higher process mass intensity and cost of goods due to the higher media demand upstream. The economic perspective for continuous integrated biomanufacturing is very attractive, but environmental consequences should not be neglected. Here, we have shown that perfusion has a higher environmental footprint in the form of water consumption compared to fed-batch. As general guidance to improve process economics, we recommend reducing water consumption.
