Centillion Technology have been innovating in the RNA manufacturing space with their platform Biofoundry-in-a-Box (BiaB). The BiaB is a modular, integrated, and multi-purpose manufacturing platform aimed at accelerating RNA production from concept to manufacturing. As a fully automated RNA microfactory, BiaB is able to handle the end-to-end manufacture of a variety of RNA-based products.
In this presentation, Harris Makatsoris, Professor of Sustainable Manufacturing Systems at King’s College London and founder of Centillion, showcased the potential of the BiaB platform. Makatsoris has extensive experience in developing manufacturing methods for advanced materials and has received significant recognition for his work in RNA vaccine manufacturing.
Makatsoris’s team includes colleagues from life sciences, pharma, medics, and chemical engineers, all working together to advance cost-effective RNA vaccines and therapies. The team has been working on RNA vaccine platforms since before the pandemic, initially focusing on the GMMA platform by GSK and later on RNA due to its rapid development potential.
The BiaB platform can manufacture a wide variety of RNA products, including but not limited to vaccines. Process intensification is the underlying concept behind the technology, condensing and combining multiple unit operations into a single operation to reduce footprint. Harris explained that reducing these operations into a lighter form-factor can enhance efficiency, reduce cost, and control impurities more effectively than conventional methods.
With this platform, Centillion have demonstrated that they are able to synthesise RNA with very few complicated downstream purification trains, and Makatsoris predicted that this will be reduced to zero in the future. The other advantage is that the BiaB offers a very controlled, closed-path environment which provides a clear track to achieving GMP compliance.
Scalability allows seamless transition from discovery. BiaB is able to scale from manufacturing just a few milligrammes per day to 50 grammes per day – at that scale, a month’s worth of production can vaccinate the planet. This makes it highly efficient for high-throughput experimentation and production.
Makatsoris concluded by explaining the ‘in-a-box’ name. Each part of the modular platform has been engineered to fit into portable containers with clean rooms, enabling GMP production in a small footprint and making it commercially available to end users.