ORF Genetics

Video

At ORF Genetics, barley holds the future of protein production

As a pioneer in the growth factor production sphere, ORF Genetics envisioned a new, DOE-supported pipeline for manufacturing high-quality, environmentally-friendly growth factors at scale.

Ásta María Einarsdóttir

Research Scientist, ORF Genetics

Below is the video transcript.

Growth factors are proteins, and they are signaling molecules for cells. They promote growth, differentiation, and proliferation. They are used in stem cell research, and they are also used in the cell-cultured meat industry. Cell-cultured meat, it's been around for about 20 years, but it's very, very expensive. It's not on the consumer level yet, but there is so much growth in this industry. Growth factors are an essential part of the medium that's used to grow the muscle cells in cell-cultured meat.

ORF Genetics is a biotech company based in Iceland, and we produce animal and human growth factors in genetically-modified barley. Barley is recognized as safe as a food substance; it is endotoxin free. Endotoxins come from bacteria, and these growth factors are normally produced in bacteria. We produce them in barley. We've always used statistics in our R&D work, but the implementation of JMP for that has really elevated our use of statistics in a much more sophisticated way. So now we get so much more insight into our complex problems, analyzing all of the factors at once that are influencing the outcome of a specific production or reaction.

Our leadership was very easily convinced when they were introduced to the idea of DOE and JMP. And one of the really good things that they did was they did not just buy one license to start off with. They bought licenses for the entire R&D team and allowed us to have time to learn this new method, this new tool, so that we could really use it.

When you get to know DOE and combine this elevated style of statistics with your subject matter knowledge, it's really easy and clear to see the advantages of that.

Spray drying is very good for aqueous solutions because it can be done in very large scale, can be done continuously and automatically. The industry standard now is freeze drying, and that is very time- and energy-consuming. It has to be done in batches, so there's lots and lots of variability. So spray drying is a very energy saving process compared to freeze drying. And it also does not affect the quality of our growth factors.

We were doing tests on one-factor-at-a-time experiments before DOE. We had just started using DOE and we saw the use for it in spray drying right away. We used that and subject matter knowledge and then there were a lot of practical implications as well to designing the study to use the material that we had in the best possible way and get the best or most information out of what we had.

We could not have done this without DOE. We had so many factors. One of the biggest things with using DOE is that you can deconvolute the interactions of factors in a process. So you get how does this factor interact with another factor.

The time that it takes to do a DOE is so much shorter, than a one-factor-at-a-time experiment. It just wouldn't even have been possible. The outcome was that we could use spray drying for our growth factors while maintaining their biological activity.

We have since built on this study and continued on and augmented the model. Being a subject matter expert and being able to use statistics on such a high level without being a statistician yourself, it allows you to solve much more complex problems than you could before.

And it's just very humbling and so very special to be able to contribute a little bit, a tiny part to science.

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