The Facility provides access for researchers to state-of-the-art equipment.

Recombinant Protein Production and Purification Facility

The Recombinant Protein Production and Purification Facility is for academic and industry researchers and is part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy program.

• 8 September 2009 | Updated 14 October 2011

NCRIS overview

• National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS)
• Services and expertise 
• Collaboration and funding
• Our capability

National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS)

National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) is part of the Australian Government ‘Backing Australia’s Ability’ initiative which provides substantial funds to generate ideas, accelerate commercialisation, encourage collaboration, develop and retain skills.

The specific goal of the Recombinant Protein Production Facility (RPPF) is to provide Australian researchers with subsidised access to state-of-the-art facilities for protein production, process development and optimisation.

Services and expertise

One of the key challenges in turning research and development to a commercial reality is to produce potentially valuable proteins in quantities large enough to support pre-commercial investigations and trials.

Optimisation, scaling-up, production and purification of recombinant proteins can be done at the Victorian Recombinant Protein Production Facility in large quantities: from hundreds of milligrams to kilograms!

GLP conditions can be arranged to facilitate seamless process and material transfers.

For production of recombinant proteins (under Australian Government Therapeutic Goods Administration licensed Good Manufacturing Practice conditions in the quantities required for animal and clinical trials) through the NCRIS program, researchers and biotechnology companies may have subsidised access to:

• CSIRO’s fermentation production facility
• Monash University’s purification facility
• licensed contract manufacturing organisations (CMOs).

Collaboration and funding

The Australian Government, State Government of Victoria, CSIRO and Monash University have invested in the Victorian Node of NCRIS enhancing Australia’s capacity to produce recombinant proteins in pre-commercial quantities.

The Victorian facility is housed in a newly refurbished, dedicated laboratory located Monash University’s Faculty of Science precinct at Clayton.

A purpose built pilot scale is located at CSIRO’s Materials Science and Engineering laboratory immediately adjacent to Monash University.

The NCRIS Recombinant Protein Production Consortium includes nodes in Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victorian node of CSIRO and the Monash University

Our capability

CSIRO’s expert capabilities at the Victorian facility includes a proven track record in fermentation and downstream processing of recombinant proteins, expressed in eukaryotic and prokaryotic hosts, such as mammalian, insect, yeast and bacterial cells.

Recent projects included the:

• production of monoclonal antibodies
• receptor
• signalling and cytokine proteins
• various enzymes
• bacterial and insect cell proteins.

The Recombinant Protein Production Facility provides national access to process development, optimisation and protein production at best-practice standards.

The state-of-the-art fermentation laboratories are equipped with a wide range of cell culture and fermentation equipment including:

• over 30 stirred tank reactors, ranging from 2 to 500L scale to allow rapid optimisation and large-scale protein production
• single use bioreactors up to 25L working volumes
• roller bottle apparatus, spinner and shaker flasks suitable for scale-up and process development work
• a wide variety of analytical equipment to follow cell growth and metabolism and characterise proteins
• downstream and purification equipment suitable to process up 400L batches of bacterial and mammalian cell culture harvests.

The Recombinant Protein Production Facility is supported by the expert capabilities of various molecular and cell biology groups to allow cell line development, protein chemistry for rapid purification and characterisation of proteins and the direct connection to the C3 crystallisation laboratories and to the Australian Synchrotron to allow structural studies.

Fragments based screening may also be available to indentify suitable candidates for further pharmaceutical research programs.