The Duchossois Household Institute (DFI) on the College of Chicago can manufacture clinical-grade encapsulated micro organism – catalyzing alternatives to raised perceive the microbiome and its myriad of roles in human well being.
The primary of its sort at an instructional establishment, the DFI’s present Good Manufacturing Apply (cGMP) facility options bacterial manufacturing capabilities in an anaerobic surroundings for fermentation, lyophilization, and encapsulation of dwell biotherapeutic merchandise.
“The DFI’s cGMP facility opens alternatives for researchers on the College of Chicago and different establishments to provoke research utilizing completely different bacterial consortia designed to deal with, stop, or remedy varied illnesses,” mentioned Eric Pamer, director of the DFI and professor within the departments of medication, microbiology, and pathology. “The capability to fabricate dwell biotherapeutic merchandise for Section 1 medical trials distinguishes the College of Chicago and can result in microbiome augmentation therapies to enhance human well being.”
The power options two cleanroom suites, every with monitored and managed temperature, humidity, differential stress, and airflow. Tools has been validated and calibrated for protected, efficient, and constant operation. A crew of devoted operators, engineers, and scientists ensures security and aseptic requirements, and maintains high quality manufacturing processes and unit operation.
“The DFI cGMP facility is able to creating therapeutics for medical trials unseen at another educational establishment. We sit up for connecting with each educational and industrial companions to develop and manufacture life-saving bacterial consortia,” mentioned Ken Onishi, supervisor for enterprise growth and licensing on the College of Chicago’s Polsky Heart for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which helps expertise commercialization and {industry} partnerships.
The DFI’s first investigator-initiated, interventional medical trial, in collaboration with clinicians at UChicago Drugs, not too long ago obtained UChicago IRB approval. As a part of this, the cGMP facility will manufacture 17 completely different micro organism strains for the therapy of sufferers with liver illness.
Robust ties with the Medical Heart supplies affected person entry for trial enrollment, amongst different advantages. These connections with cross-campus items, along with the DFI’s many sources, uniquely positions the College to ship the very best high quality care and industry-leading analysis.
Further DFI capabilities embrace the Host-Microbe Metabolomics Facility, which makes use of mass spectrometry to establish metabolites; the Microbiome Metagenomics Facility, which supplies state-of-the-art sequencing providers; and the Symbiotic Bacterial Pressure Financial institution, which incorporates nearly 2,000 bacterial isolates obtained from wholesome human donors. These features are supported by bioinformaticians who present complete computational information analyses, together with genome meeting and annotation.
