The custom microbial fermentation process starts well before your strain enters our fermentation tanks to be grown for commercial use. In fact, it begins on a relatively small scale with our process development (PD) team. Our team’s process is thorough and precise, ensuring confidence in the integrity of your product when it comes time to scale up your strain in larger tanks. But what exactly does process development for custom microbial fermentation entail, and how do we set ourselves above the rest with our method?
Process Development Timeline
At MDG, process development is comprised of three phases:
Phase 1: Strain Identification
Our PD team starts by performing multiple colony picks and/or extractions on a strain sample you send us, ensuring that what we received is a single strain and that there hasn’t been any contamination of the sample. Next, we make our own stocks of the sample strain and compare those with the source plate containing the original strain. If the two strains match, our team streaks out the strain they produced and sends it back to the customer for confirmation. Once we get your go-ahead, our team moves into Phase 2.
Phase 2: Media Optimization
The second phase is focused on finding and optimizing the right medium in which to grow your strain. Our PD team uses a variety of cutting-edge equipment to search for a type of media that will result in maximum strain growth, as this allows the entire custom fermentation process to run quickly and smoothly. We can screen up to 200 different media components at a time, whether they’re provided by you or pulled from our media library. After our team finds the best media option and you approve their choice, the final phase starts.
Phase 3: Pilot-Scale Testing
In this phase, we carry out additional testing on the strain to ensure we’re scaling up your strain efficiently and economically. Using our mini bioreactors, the PD team fine-tunes variables like pH, air flow, and agitation to create even more precise growth parameters. The goal is to find a combination of media type and variable adjustments that will produce the highest possible outcome of spores in a final product. Once we’ve conducted a few runs in the mini bioreactors and dried the resulting sample with one of our pilot dryers, we perform DNA checks and enumeration to ensure that the final sample product is what you intended. Once the sample is approved, the process development workflow is over, and production at a larger scale can begin!
What makes MDG’s process development different?
We pride ourselves on our streamlined process development timeline. Phase 1 is typically two weeks long per single strain, Phase 2 is about four weeks, and Phase 3 takes around six weeks, bringing the total time spent in process development to 12 weeks. This timeline means we can work quickly yet carefully to properly optimize growth conditions for your strain. We are genuinely passionate about the process and come to the table with many years of experience. Whether our team members are preparing media, setting up experiments, sampling strains, or anything else their jobs entail, you can be confident that your strain will be expertly handled with care and precision.
Partner with MDG to Achieve Success
From the moment our process development team receives your sample strain to the final product check performed by our quality assurance and production specialists, you’re in good hands when you partner with MDG. Want to learn more about your options? Contact us today to get started.
MDG is the Bacillus solution that helps you scale and streamline without sacrificing product effectiveness.
