Intracellular Products Release After Fermentation

During the downstream processing of industrial fermentation, certain fermentation products located within cells cannot be released spontaneously and therefore require cell lysis. The release of intracellular products is essential for the production of valuable fermented compounds.

As a leading fermentation service provider, BOC Sciences has the expertise and extensive experience in fermentation process development. Based on our optimized processes and advanced technologies in fermentation broth processing, we are able to release intracellular products by disrupting cells with various techniques, helping our customers obtain high-yield targeted products.

Introduction of Intracellular Products Release

Microbial fermentation affords a variety of products that are important and useful to human lives, including chemical intermediates, antibiotics, enzymes, and therapeutic proteins. Some of these are produced by microorganisms, excreted into culture mediums, and conveniently isolated. On the other hand, the separation and purification of intracellular products often require complex manipulation steps that usually begin with the cell disruption process.

A variety of intracellular components can be obtained using cell disruption, including vitamins, enzymes, proteins that are not expressed outside the cell, and viral vectors. Cell disruption for the release of intracellular products is important in producing biological products, such as enzymes, nucleic acids, vaccine antigens, and viral vectors that are used for gene therapy.

Methods of Intracellular Products Release

Microorganisms or cells can be disrupted using chemical, physical, enzymatic, or combined methods to achieve the release of intracellular products.

• Chemical methods: Treatment with alkalies, organic solvents, and detergents for cell lysis and achieve the release of intracellular products.
• Physical methods: Microorganisms or cells can be disrupted using physical methods, including osmotic shock, thermolysis, ultrasonication, high-pressure homogenization, nitrogen decompression, and grind glass beads.
• Enzymatic methods: Enzymatic cell disruption performs cell lysis selectively under mild conditions, beneficial for product recovery and purification. Among all enzymatic techniques, lysozyme is most commonly used.

Applications of Cell Disruption

Effective and optimum disruption methods that maximize the release of valuable components from cells are critical for fermentation's downstream processing.

• Large-scale production of biofunctional proteins using microalgae is limited by its resistant cell walls, which reduces the release of cell contents. Therefore, using cell disruption methods under mild conditions, the biological activity and functionality of proteins can be retained while disrupting cell walls.
• Cell disruption is an essential step during the manufacturing of many biologicals in the pharmaceutical industry. The optimization of cell disruption technology and screening of suitable methods are critical in preventing the deterioration of biological products, such as enzymes, proteins, nucleic acids, antigens, and viral vectors. The screening of suitable cell disruption methods is also essential for retaining the biological activity of enzymes, proteins, nucleic acids, antigens, viral vectors, etc.

What Can We Do?

BOC Sciences has extensive experience in fermentation development and expertise in downstream process optimization. We offer intracellular product release services and guarantee that the activity of target products will not be affected by cell disruption. As a premium provider of fermentation CDMO services, BOC Sciences provides cost-efficient custom fermentation services to support shortened commercialization periods of projects.