“Our bioreactor portfolio in general is designed to be very modular and very easy to use for our customers,” Joshua Hays from MilliporeSigma told us at the tradeshow.
“At the larger scale especially, what we’ve gotten consistently from customers was that they weren’t easy enough to use, and we really wanted to make it easy for the operator to stand in front of it, put the bag in, deploy it, fill it with media, do their run, and reverse the steps at the end of the day,” he explained.
To achieve this, the company designed the bioreactor with a physical drawer that occupies the bottom half of the system, “so you have full access to the inside of the bottom of the tank,” added Hays, who said that one person can “very easily” use the system.
Additionally, the bioreactor’s bag is manufactured and packaged in such a way that one the air turns on, the bag self deploys inside the tank, “with virtually no operator manipulations necessary,” said Hays.
“In the span of 15 to 20 minutes a single person can put the bag it, blow it up, and be ready to start filling it up with media,” he added.
The company also showcased its Mobius Power MIX 2000 for mixing buffers, media, and other biopharma ingredients. The mixer features an impeller design and motor based on magnetically-coupled NovAseptic technology. According to Hays, by having the impeller on the bottom the operating range is greatly increased.
“It has a 5 to 1 turndown ratio,” he explained. “That’s a wide range and allows customer to do a lot of things with it.”
The company also unveiled what it called the first multi-use disposable sterile connectors for biopharma at the show. The new technology, the Lynx CDR connectors, allows users to connect, reconnect, and disconnect when the flow path is wet and pressurized.