Research

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Synthetic Biology underpins advances in the bioeconomy

Biological systems - including the simplest cells - exhibit a broad range of functions to thrive in their environment. Research in the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology is focused on the possibility of engineering the underlying biochemical processes to solve many of the challenges facing society, from healthcare to sustainable energy. In particular, we model, analyse, design and build biological and biochemical systems in living cells and/or in cell extracts, both exploring and enhancing the engineering potential of biology. 

As part of our research we develop novel methods to accelerate the celebrated Design-Build-Test-Learn synthetic biology cycle. As such research in the Centre for Synthetic Biology highly multi- and interdisciplinary covering computational modelling and machine learning approaches; automated platform development and genetic circuit engineering ; multi-cellular and multi-organismal interactions, including gene drive and genome engineering; metabolic engineering; in vitro/cell-free synthetic biology; engineered phages and directed evolution; and biomimetics, biomaterials and biological engineering.

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Kis:2020:10.1002/amp2.10060,
author = {Kis, Z and Kontoravdi, K and Dey, AK and Shattock, R and Shah, N},
doi = {10.1002/amp2.10060},
journal = {Journal of Advanced Manufacturing and Processing},
pages = {1--10},
title = {Rapid development and deployment of high-volumevaccines for pandemic response},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/amp2.10060},
volume = {2},
year = {2020}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Overcoming pandemics, such as the current Covid19 outbreak, requires the manufacture of several billion doses of vaccines within months. This is an extremely challenging task given the constraints in smallscale manufacturing for clinical trials, clinical testing timelines involving multiple phases and largescale drug substance and drug product manufacturing. To tackle these challenges, regulatory processes are fasttracked, and rapidresponse manufacturing platform technologies are used. Here, we evaluate the current progress, challenges ahead and potential solutions for providing vaccines for pandemic response at an unprecedented scale and rate. Emerging rapidresponse vaccine platform technologies, especially RNA platforms, offer a high productivity estimated at over 1 billion doses per year with a small manufacturing footprint and low capital cost facilities. The selfamplifying RNA (saRNA) drug product cost is estimated at below 1 USD/dose. These manufacturing processes and facilities can be decentralized to facilitate production, distribution, but also raw material supply. The RNA platform technology can be complemented by an a priori Quality by Design analysis aided by computational modeling in order to assure product quality and further speed up the regulatory approval processes when these platforms are used for epidemic or pandemic response in the future.
AU  - Kis,Z
AU  - Kontoravdi,K
AU  - Dey,AK
AU  - Shattock,R
AU  - Shah,N
DO  - 10.1002/amp2.10060
EP  - 10
PY  - 2020///
SN  - 2637-403X
SP  - 1
TI  - Rapid development and deployment of high-volumevaccines for pandemic response
T2  - Journal of Advanced Manufacturing and Processing
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/amp2.10060
UR  - https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/amp2.10060
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/80805
VL  - 2
ER  -
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