UCL DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Congratulations to James Lawrence (Biochemical Engineering PhD student), Winner of the Ashok Kumar Fellowship

UCL iGEM coordinator Dr Darren Nesbeth was on the Judging Panel at iGEM Europe 2011 and supervised UCL's 2011 iGEM team throughout their summer project to reduce the cost of manufacturing DNA medicines and gain valuable interdisciplinary experience of research, public engagement and ethics.

 ImmunoBiology Ltd (ImmBio) is a Cambridge-based SME company, working to develop novel anti-infective vaccines addressing areas of high unmet need. The company’s pipeline is based on two distinct technology platforms. The first, ImmBioVax™, replicates the innate stage of the immune response to safely create protection and contains antigens, heat shock proteins and antigenic proteins complexed to heat shock proteins. The second, ImmunoBodies™, consists of an antibody Fc-antigen fusion protein approach. Both technology platforms target antigen delivery to the dendritic cells of the immune system, which play a critical role in generating the immune responses necessary for successful protection against infectious agents. Rapid development of cost-effective, viable production processes is critical for the success of a biotechnology development organisation and particularly so for vaccine production. This need drove ImmBio’s initial collaboration with the ACBE, a joint Technology-Strategy-Board-funded project (Manufacture of low cost, high-efficacy vaccines) with Professor Mike Hoare. This project uses ACBE ultra scale-down (USD) approaches to predict process at scale for future ImmunoBody vaccines. The collaboration provided ImmBio with an introduction to the broad range of ACBE courses and collaborative opportunities open to Biotech Companies.

PRESS RELEASE 3 November 2011

UCL Biochemical Engineering has won a coveted prize at the prestigious IChemE Awards for Innovation and Excellence 2011. The Education and Training Award was for the development of the Modular training for the Bioprocess Industries (MBI®).

Initiated  in 1994 by a pump-priming BBSRC grant, the programme offers a unique blend of expert lectures supported by detailed case studies all run in the state-of-the-art facilities of the Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering. This combination of teaching in world class facilities by internationally recognised experts enables delegates to turn life science discoveries into new medicines, therapies or sustainable bioprocesses. To date over 1,200 modules have been delivered to over 750 delegates from over 250 companies world-wide.

"MBI® is a true flagship activity which involves the whole department and creates significant benefits for our full time students at all levels as well as providing crucial Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for the industrial delegates. This award is testament to the total commitment made to the creation and constant development of the programme and to the clear impact that it has made in the sector.  Coupled with the IChemE prize for Innovationa & Excellence in Bioprocessing awarded to the BiCE programme in 2010 it underlines the importance we place at UCL in understanding the big industry questions and in addressing them in a fundamental and strategic fashion," said Professor Nigel Titchener-Hooker, Head of Dept of Biochemical Engineering, UCL after the award.

The MBI® modules are delivered by departmental staff, as part of their normal teaching duties, and by a range of external experts who in particular provide industry case studies and perspectives. Undergraduates, MSc and PhD students and the large cohort of EngDs from the department’s IDTC all benefit from key training elements of the programme and very tangibly from the investments in infrastructure it has enabled. Most recently the MBI® programme has been supplemented by VISION, a programme focussed on the needs of senior executives in the life-science business sector. This is now providing a growing interface with MBI®, creating a continuum for post-experience education and development.

Industry experts provided feedback to 3rd year Biochemical Engineering undergraduates on their Design Project on “Healthy Ageing with Therapeutic Antibodies”.