The Biotechnology Unit is responsible for the production and purification of biological material. The Unit undertakes a wide array of biological production tasks such as large scale growth of prokaryotes and eucaryotes, and production and purification of biological compounds especially proteins. These products, not available from commercial sources, are needed for clinical and structural studies. The Biotechnology Unit is capable of handling these various production tasks by implementing both physiological and technical approaches. Efficient process development and production is possible since the Unit possesses two integrated elements: a fully operational multi purpose pilot production facility and the capability of conducting research and process development. During the last year the unit performed approximately 200 different, production preparations including: 1) growing various microorganisms such as recombinant Escherichia coli, recombinant Pichia pastoris, yeasts, mutant strain of Corynebacteria diphtheria and mutant strain of Bacillus anthracis; 2) propagating large volumes of mammalian cells such as HeLa, CHO, HEK 293, insects cells such as Sf 9 and hi five; 3) purifying gram quantities of recombinant Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A, protective antigen from Bacillus anthracis, Staphylococcal enterotoxin type C, recombinant malarial protein CSP, Chlostridium difficile toxin A, recombinant adiponectin and several antibodies from hybridoma cultures and rabbit serum. On the research and development arena, the unit conducted work in the following topics: 1) Continued the development of more efficient methods for large scale protein recovery, work was continued on the implementation of expanded bed adsorption techniques utilizing new types of expanded column: this column does not have flow adaptors and screens and therefore can handle larger concentration of biomass at higher low rates; 2) continued its research aimed at understanding the glucose metabolism of various recombinant E. coli strains in an effort to find out why certain strains are more suitable for foreign protein production using microarrays technology and protein analysis; 3) continued its research project associated with mammalian cells aiming at understanding the genetic difference between cells that can grow in suspension, and cells that are anchorage dependent. 4) In collaboration with LDMI, NICHD, the unit continued the work on the development of new vaccine against Shigella flexneri and Bacillus anthracis, the products are currently in clinical trials.5) the unit continued its research and development project on the production of recombinant proteins from filamentous fungi. 6) A new research and development project aiming at the production of plasmid DNA was initiated.
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