© Testa Center
For several years now, an innovation challenge has been held once a year in Uppsala, Sweden. The EXNER company will be represented with a new type of single-use sensor for the first time.
The EXNER company, known for high-quality optical sensors for determining cell growth and turbidity, has been given the opportunity to take part in an innovation challenge called the „Testa Challenge“, which takes place once a year in the Testa Center in Uppsala. This facility is a joint initiative of the Swedish government and the company Cytiva. The Testa Center is intended to serve as a bridge between research and industry in the biopharma sector and help to scale innovative solutions and thus facilitate large-scale production.
The Testa Challenge 2024 follows a standard industrial process for producing monoclonal antibodies. The aim of the competition is to optimise it through advanced process monitoring. As part of this challenge, EXNER will participate in the upstream process, which is carried out entirely using single-use equipment. A new type of sensor with a hybrid design will be used. This enables cell growth in the bioreactor to be reliably monitored using optical inline measurement, regardless of the system design and size. The innovative sensor design enables processes to be easily scaled with the same sensor equipment and enables measurements of very high cell densities. At the same time, the hybrid approach also takes sustainability into account, especially in single-use applications.
