Mike’s research focuses on creating novel routes to speed the translation from life science discovery to outcome for next generation therapeutics and help ensure wider access. This particularly concerns advanced biological macromolecular and cellular materials and their processing using a complex sequence of stages from a bioreactor through recovery and purification to product formulation ready for delivery. Challenges for such bioprocess studies include: whole antibodies or fragments or fusions and other therapeutic proteins; modified human cells (especially for cancer therapy), disabled viruses; whole human cells for regenerative therapy.

Speed is crucial if we are to realise the benefits of many advances in the life sciences.

Much of this research is based on discovering ultra scale–down methods to study operations such as centrifugation, membranes, filters and chromatography at the millilitre scale. This work was originally  managed collaboratively with Nigel. Titchener–Hooker, Yuhong. Zhou, Dan Bracewell, Eli Keshavarz–Moore and John. Ward (then at Structural and Molecular Biology,UCL) within the EPSRC-funded IMRC Bioprocessing programme. This programme  involved fifteen leading national and international biopharmaceutical companies and fourteen UCL and UK academic groups of a wide range of disciplines complementary to biochemical engineering.

 Examples have included collaboration with: Mark Smales, Kent on mass spectrometry analysis of variants of antibody structures and the effects of bioprocessing; David Williams and Henk Versteeg, Loughborough on plasmid DNA formulation and aerosolisation; Kerry Chester, Royal Free Hospital, Oncology on bioprocessing of fusion proteins for targeted cancer therapies; Colin Love and Rob Coffin, Biovex and Molecular Pathology UCL on disabled viruses for vaccines.

A Technology Strategy Board Programme enabled collaboration between Onyvax, LGC, ReNeuron, Nottingham Trent University (Bioinformatics Centre) and UCL on human cell bioprocessing for cell–based vaccine cancer therapy. Such activities benefit from initiatives in the Department such as the MBI programme for knowledge transfer and dissemination.

Particular research achievements have included the successful creation of ultra scale–down mimics for high–speed, continuous–flow centrifuges where, from the millilitre scale it has, for example, been possible to predict the performance of industrial scale processing of mammalian cell broths (in collaboration with Lonza Biologics). This offered the opportunity to specify with greater levels of confidence and at earlier stages in process development of the specification of centrifuges to be used. This work has now being taken forward to address the more complex targets described above and also considerations of how the necessary response to emergency healthcare needs (e.g. rapid production of a vaccine) may best be met.

Funding for the above research came from the EPSRC, especially for the EPSRC IMRC Bioprocessing and EPSRC IDTC EngD Bioprocess Leadership programmes, BBSRC Targetted Bioprocessing Studentships, the Technology Strategy Board Programme and a range of company collaborators including Lonza Biologics, UCB Celltech, Biovex, Pall Life Sciences, ReNeuron, ImmunoBiology, GSK, Stabilitech.

Recent collaborations have included research into processing of domain antibodies (with GSK) and most recently with Merck for antibody formulation, Biocatalysts for industrial enzyme processing and Pall Life Sciences for ultra scale-down of depth filtration..