Getinge Upstream Bioprocessing Summit 2025

Name of presentation:
Bioprocessing tools and strategies for cultivated meat production  

Associate Professor in Biochemical Engineering – Cellular Agriculture | MSc in Biochemical Engineering Programme Director and Admissions Tutor | IChemE BESIG Committee Member | ESACT-UK Committee Member and WebMaster

Dr. Petra Hanga is an Associate Professor in Biochemical Engineering at University College London and also the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Quest Meat Ltd, a UK cultivated meat start-up. She is a biochemical engineer by training working at the intersection of engineering, life sciences and commercial interfaces with a particular emphasis on multidisciplinary approaches to address one distinct grand challenge: food and nutrition for health, by advancing cultivated meat technologies that have the potential to address many of the current global challenges. To date, she has secured over £1.5M funding as Principal Investigator and £13.5M as co-Investigator and she delivered >30 invited talks and seminars on her work in the cultivated meat research. Petra sits on numerous committees including ESACT-UK and BESIG IChemE where she advocates for cultivated meat and alternative proteins, and she is the winner of the inaugural ESACT-UK Chris Hewitt Rising Star Award 2021.

Name of presentation: 
From in vitro erythropoiesis to a transfusion product

Dr. Emile van den Akker is a principle investigator at Sanquin (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), which includes the Dutch national blood supply foundation. His research is embedded within the Department of Hematopoiesis. He has founded the iPSC-facility at Sanquin. Graduated as a molecular biologist in 1999, he obtained his PhD in 2004 from Erasmus university in Rotterdam (The Netherlands),  on the role of Erythropoietin and Stem Cell Factor signal transduction during erythropoiesis. Post-doctoral studies (2003-2010) at the Curie Institute in Paris on transcriptional regulation and transformation of erythroblasts, and at the University of Bristol on the regulation of red blood cells (RBC) membrane proteins during erythroblast differentiation, further established his career in the field of erythropoiesis. Following a Landsteiner Foundation for Blood Transfusion Research (LSBR) fellowship he became principle investigator at Sanquin. Currently, his research focusses on the production of hematopoietic transplantation and transfusion products from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC), with an emphasis on molecular control of erythropoiesis and culture upscaling processes. He is currently moving towards a clinical study to transfuse cultured red blood cells from donor-derived iPSC into healthy volunteers.

Name of presentation:
Design and scaling of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products under Good Manufacturing Practices standards

Dr. Alba López Fernández is involved in the design and scaling of manufacturing processes according to GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) standards and the optimization and validation of the methods currently used to produce ATMPs for clinical use. She has experience in the production of human mesenchymal stromal cells and extracellular vesicles-based products. Previously, she was a research scientist at the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute in Barcelona, where she focused about regenerative medicine and tissue engineering in clinical relevant animal models and earned a PhD in Biomedicine from the same institution

Name of presentation:
Bioreactor process development for hematopoietic cell production: a hybrid experimental and computational fluid dynamics approach

Ramon obtained his BSc and MSc in Biochemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology, with a specific focus on mathematical modelling and machine learning. During his education he developed a fascination for applying various computational tools to improve biopharmaceutical production processes. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD at Delft University of Technology in the department of Bioprocess Engineering, where he is focused on applying Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models for upscaling stem cell culture processes in bioreactors.  

Name of presentation:
Bioreactor process development for hematopoietic cell production: a hybrid experimental and computational fluid dynamics approach

Brenda Juarez studied her bachelor’s degree in Bioprocess Engineering at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, in Mexico. She moved to the Netherlands to pursue her master’s degree in Biotechnology at Wageningen University. Throughout her academic journey, Brenda developed a keen interest in utilizing biotechnology to develop innovative biopharmaceutical processes. Currently, she is working on upscaling the production of hematopoietic cells in bioreactors, which can further be used to manufacture red blood cell transfusion units to treat patients with severe anemias"

Name of presentation: 
The Trials & Tribulations of Fermentation Scale-up

Chris Carter is a highly motivated & focused Fermentation Specialist with over 25 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical/diagnostics industry. With a BSc (Hons) in Applied Microbiology & an MSc in Biotechnology from Liverpool John Moores University he has built extensive industrial experience having worked at Delta Biotechnology, Pfizer Global R&D, Abbott Diagnostics & is currently a Senior Supervisor for Upstream Processing in Technical Operations at SEKISUI Diagnostics. Chris has expertise in microbial fermentation, protein expression, cell culture (mammalian & baculovirus), GMP manufacture, technical project execution along with purification and analytical development.

Name of presentation:
Palm oil production without palm trees by using fermentation

This company was founded in 2021 to develop a sustainable replacement for palm oil. The sustainable alternative is produced by fermentation using oil-producing yeasts, which are cultivated on locally available sidestreams from the AgriFood industry. This can be food waste, but also residuals generated during primary harvesting of crops or generated during processing of fruit/vegetables such as vegetable-cuttings, potato peels and brewer’s spent grain.

JH has a lifelong background in fermentation technology working for applied research institutes such as NIZO food research and Wageningen Food & Biobased research, but also working for the food and beverage industry such as Coca-Cola, Corbion and the Dutch dairy industry. Currently, JH still holds the (part-time) Professor Chair of Industrial Molecular Microbiology at the University of Amsterdam.