Biopharmaceuticals, those medicines that are produced in or extracted from biological sources, are increasingly important within the pharmaceutical industry, and rely on quality animal cell cultures. But this requires heavy, expensive equipment, which needs to be operated by expert staff, to consistently monitor and operate the cell cultures.

iCONSENSUS aimed to achieve a faster, safer and more cost-effective process for the development and manufacture of these products, through the development of innovative analytical, hardware, software and high-throughput miniaturised tools for the development, monitoring and control of biological processes within the biopharmaceutical production pipeline.

Some of the new tools that have been developed include “Sensor Sticks” made by PreSens which measure dissolved oxygen, partial pressure of carbon dioxide and pH levels rapidly and accurately within bioreactors; new and improved glycan assay tests developed by PAIA Biotech using special microplates for high throughput assays; a new cell density quantification tool put forward by IpraSense that gives automated high throughput cell count and viability determination; and monitoring methods by Kantisto to better quantify various components of the cell culture and of the media used to grow the cells.

This online event will discuss the iConsensus project, which was funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a public-private partnership between the European Union and the European pharmaceuticals industry. The goal of this event is to showcase the project’s achievements to a wider, general audience, boost the uptake of the project’s results, and demonstrate how the project has addressed key challenges in health research and innovation. Leaders of the project will present and then discuss these themes followed by a Q&A with the audience. A recording will be available on the website shortly after the webinar.

• Challenges and objectives
• Tangible results and their impact
• Exploitation of results and sustainability of assets developed