Phage Consultants - Contamination Prevention Services

Contaminations are one of major threats in bioprocesses. If contamination occurs, it may result in complete paralysis of facility productivity. Although even the best protection do not guarantee they never occur, better prepared facility will recover faster, and the contamination will not turn into outbreak. The company Phage Consultants was created to help companies which production is based on microbial activities, to fight with and prevent from bacteriophages and other contaminants. Based on our research and experience we propose different ways of assistance: from personnel training, through consulting and process optimization, to help in development of new facilities. Phage Consultants can help you in avoiding contaminations and in recovery from contaminations, which already occurred.

Due to frequent inquiries we introduced a contract research service in all aspects of bacteriophage use in various fields of biotechnology, medicine, food and crop protection etc. Our extensive expertise in phage biology research help us to deliver you high quality results in relatively short time and in competitive price.

Our customers

We provide our experience and help to wide range of companies which want to protect their bioprocesses against contamination or which are experiencing problems caused by contaminants. They customers comes from pharmaceutical sector, industrial biotechnology, research laboratories and dairy industry sector. As type of problems they are experiencing is easy to use for their competitor, we provide our customers professional help and protection of their identity.

Bacterial fermentations

Bacterial fermentations are prone to several types of contaminations:

Phage contamination

Among them the most devastating are contaminations caused by bacteriophages. They usually result in destruction of bacterial culture with subsequent contamination of facility due to sampling or leakage caused by equipment failure. In this type of contamination equipment failure is likely to occur in some equipment set-ups due to extensive foaming and possible clotting of exhaust filter with subsequent pressure build-up.

Bacterial contaminations

This is the most common type of contaminant in bacterial cultures. Depending on type of bacterium contaminating the process the effects caused are different. In all cases one may expect reduced yield of product, and possible contamination by metabolites of contaminating bacteria. In some cases toxins may be produced by contaminants. There are different types of contaminations caused by bacteria. The probability of occurrence may differ depending on the process itself and the organism used in the process. One of the most frequently occurring contaminants are lactic acid bacteria and sporulating bacteria. Especially the latest type is a challenge to clean-up and prevent re-occurrence.

Fungal contamination

Due to relatively low growth rate of fungi when compared to bacteria this problem may occur only in processes based on continuous bacterial fermentation. However, when occur it causes very cumbersome and often expensive restart of whole production line.

How we can help:

• Consulting
• Contamination detection
• Research
• Rapid detection methods
• Help in facility development
• Help in proper choice of equipment
• Personnel training

Eucariotic cell cultures

Propagation of eukaryotic cells cultures are relatively long-lasting processes, what make them sensitive to greater number of possible contaminants. Among them are:

Virus contamination

Viruses are the most dangerous contaminant in this type of fermentation. Due to small sizes, they are the toughest enemy to prevent entering the process, and their occurrence may result in very long, lasting even several months, paralysis of whole facility productivity. Due to fact that this type of cell cultures is usually used for production of highly valuable products, a risk of running fermentation without optimal protection is something, what can cost you a lot.

Bacterial contamination

Bacterial contamination of eukaryotic cell cultures is a problem, which occur relatively frequently. Especially well known for contaminating this type of fermentation are Mycoplasmas, but also other type of bacteria can be a causative agent of this problem.

Fungal contamination

Fungal contamination due to relatively long fermentation process can be also a problem. When fungi appear in the culture they may cause adverse effect like e.g. production of toxins. They are also relatively hard to clean, due to high resistance of fungal spores.
How we can help:

• Consulting
• Contamination detection
• Research
• Rapid detection methods
• Help in facility development
• Help in proper choice of equipment
• Personnel training

Fungi

Fungal fermentations are considered to be the safest one and least prone to contaminations. However, they also suffer from contamination problems. The most frequent are bacterial and fungal contaminations.

Bacterial contamination

Due to relatively long development cycle of fungi, even single bacterial cell can relatively easy multiply to high numbers during fungal fermentation. This may result in reduction of product yield, but also in lack of useful product if biomass were to be produced. One of the most common contaminants are lactic acid bacteria.

Fungal contamination

Fungal contamination can be contaminated also by other fungi. As this type of contamination may be relatively hard to detect, good measures of precaution should be undertaken to prevent it.

Dairy industry

In dairy industry controlling contamination issues is very important, not only due to possible health hazards. Milk is a raw material, which not always can be sterilized, and almost every bath contain bacteriophages infecting bacteria used in production process. Moreover, some phages attacking lactic acid bacteria are resistant to pasteurization, and thus they are much harder to stop. As it is not always possible to prevent bacteriophages from entering production process, there is a possibility to prevent re-infections, which are the one to blame for vast majority of production failures.

Our activities include:

• Consulting
• Contamination detection
• Research
• Rapid detection methods
• Help in facility development
• Help in proper choice of equipment
• Personnel training

Contact details

Phage Consultants
Tenisowa 10/5
80-180 Gdansk
Poland
tel. +48 503636224
tel. +48 512313733
fax: +48 58 7463453
e-mail: phageconsultants@phageconsultants.com
URL: http://www.phageconsultants.com