June 2015 AICHE North Bay Meeting

Join us to meet PPA Award winner Jean Bender

Continuous Centrifuge Characterization and Scale Down Model Development

Continuous centrifugation is widely used as the primary clarification step for cell culture.  Centrifugation followed by depth and sterile filtration is an effective means to remove cells and cellular debris prior to purification.  Successful scale up and technology transfer of harvest operations depends on the use of small scale models to predict harvest clarification performance.  We currently use a pilot scale disc stack centrifuge to model the commercial scale centrifuges; however, the amount of feed material needed for characterization is typically too large for practical studies.  The scope of this work was to develop a bench scale model to characterize harvest performance, thus reducing material requirements and increasing the efficiency of harvest characterization.  Conditions were determined using a scale down device to mimic the conditions from pilot scale centrifugation. The scale down device has been implemented as a tool for process development and harvest characterization.

Jean Bender is currently Senior Director, BioProcess Engineering at Medimmune and her responsibilities include managing 7 scientists and engineers, and scale up and transfer of clinical and commercial processes to manufacturing. Prior to Medimmune, Jean worked at Genentech for 19 years and was responsible for purification technology and process development. Jean has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University and a M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California- Berkeley. Jean has been very active in AiChE and served as Vice Chair and Chair of the Northern California section, is a member of the Society of Biological Engineering (SBE) advisory board, a voting member for the Admissions Committee, responsible for reviewing Senior Member and Fellow applications for National and has participated in multiple Spring and Annual meetings, including acting as co-programming chair.

Program consists of:

• Social and Gathering - 6-6:30 pm  

• Dinner - chicken Or Vegetarian 6:30 -7:15 pm

• Lecture - 7:15-8:15 pm  

Location: Hs Lordship 199 Seawall Dr, Berkeley, CA 94710