Biology & Life Sciences
Do you want to know what is a bioreactor and how is it operated? How are cells cultivated for biopharmaceutical production, and what are the difficulties? In this course, you will learn the basic techniques for the successful cultivation of mammalian, plant, and stem cells.
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Course Details

Language English
Duration 8 weeks
Effort 5 hrs/week
Description

Over the past 20 years, many aspects of cell cultivation techniques have become increasingly important. Today, animal and human cell cultures are used to produce antibodies to treat cancer and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. In addition, these cells are of interest for vaccine production and gene therapies.

The current focus is on sustainability, therefore plant cell and tissue cultures have recently been used in commercial products, active ingredients in cosmetics, and food additives, and they are also used to make therapeutic enzymes. That, however, is not all. Human stem cell-based therapies and human on-chip models for testing cancer drugs and therapies are becoming more and more attractive.

Our course will provide you with a solid foundation in how to successfully cultivate the most commonly used cells for these applications. It will prepare you for the practice when you are handling these cells in the laboratory and at the same time will help you to better understand the language/concepts used by cell culture technologists. The focus will be on Chinese hamster ovary cells - CHO cells for short, mesenchymal stem cells, and plant suspension cultures.

What you will learn

  • Types, design, and operation of bioreactors

  • Process modes used in biotechnology

  • Characterization and evaluation of cultivation systems

  • Fundamentals of cell biology

  • Metabolism of mammalian, stem, and plant cells

  • Cultivation media and additives

  • Routine working techniques in the laboratory

  • Process scale-up and optimization

  • Products and clinical application of stem cells

Course instructors

Regine Eibl

Prof. Dr. Ing. Regine Eile is Lecturer and Head Cell Cultivation Techniques at ZHAW School of Life Sciences and Facility Management.

Regine Eibl has held an engineering degree in “Biotechnology” since 1987 and a Ph.D. in biotechnology from the Technical …

Rüdiger Maschke

Dipl.-Ing. Rüdiger Maschke is Research Associate at ZHAW School of Life Sciences and Facility Management, Section for Biochemical Engineering.
Rüdiger Maschke studied chemical engineering with a specialization in bioprocess engineering at the TU Dresden i…

Valentin Jossen

Dr. Ing. Valentin Josses is at ZHAW School of Life Sciences and Facility Management.
Valentin Jossen holds a Ph.D. in process engineering from the Technical University of Berlin.

Dr. Jossen is working on various research and development projects in the fi…

Stefan Seidel

Stefan Seidel holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology and a Master’s degree in Applied Computational Life Sciences from ZHAW. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at TU Berlin and a research assistant at the Institute of Chemistry and Biotechnology at the…

Cedric Schirmer

Cedric Schirmer has a bachelor's degree in biotechnology from the Berliner Hochschule für Technik (Germany) and a master's degree in bioprocess engineering from the Hamburg University of Technology (Germany).

His expertise is in the field of process engi…

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