Antibodies and their fragments are considered as one of the most desirable biotechnological products. Pichia pastoris is one of the more studied microorganisms, with extremely good properties for industrial production, which is the reason why it is often selected as the production organism of choice for such complex products. When constructing a bioprocess scheme, we often follow the same rules, but still have to take an individual approach with each one, as no organism or product responses the same way to an adjustment. In our work we took this individual approach of optimization for our small-scale cultivation of Pichia pastoris, that produced Fcab antibody fragments. With changes to the inoculum preparation and inoculation process, we were able to standardize the start of the process. Adjustments of the parameters, such as the dilution rate, enabled the continuous growth of Pichia pastoris which maintained its productivity. This was proven with the isolation of Fcab from the fermentation broth at the end of several successive small-scale bioprocesses and their successful detection with SDS-PAGE. Additionally, to the isolation, we also used the resulting data of HPLC detectors, to calculate the estimated concentrations of Fcab fragments in each vessel at the end of each successful process.
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