PUNE: A multinational team of researchers, including scientists from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, has demonstrated that decentralised, laboratory-scale biomanufacturing can help countries rapidly produce essential biological materials during future pandemics, reducing dependence on centralised supply chains.
Event Context
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The researchers acknowledged support from multiple funding agencies, including the Canadian Development Fund; while the Indian team received support through the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute’s (SICI) Shastri COVID-19 Pandemic Response Grant.
Photo caption: Global research network for the international multisite implementation of distributed cell-free protein biomanufacturing, highlighting participating sites and their focus areas, including growth factors, vaccines, synthetic biosensors, and diagnostic enzymes
Team Analysis
At IISER Pune, PhD student Tanvi Kale and professor Athale manufactured and characterised protein production using synthetic DNA constructs and cell-free extracts. Following jointly developed protocols and using locally available laboratory equipment, the team evaluated the robustness and reproducibility of the manufacturing process. Kale has since completed her PhD and is now working in the molecular diagnostics sector.
The multinational research team also tested a paper-based diagnostic platform based on toehold RNA technology, an alternative molecular detection approach to conventional PCR-based diagnostics.
Match Outlook
An important aspect of the study was demonstrating that cell-free extracts could be both shipped between laboratories in this case, from Chile, and independently reproduced by collaborating laboratories while maintaining consistent protein production at the lab scale.
Building on the same platform, the Canadian researchers used freeze-dried cellular contents and the DNA sequence of the coronavirus to produce virus spike proteins as a vaccine candidate. The vaccine candidate was successfully tested in mice, providing proof that localised biomanufacturing could be feasible during public health emergencies.
The researchers clarified that the technology is not intended to replace commercially manufactured reagents or improve upon PCR-based testing, but rather to provide governments and policymakers with an additional tool for responding to future health crises when conventional supply chains are disrupted.
“This research was supported by a collaborative sense of common purpose that united labs, where none of the investigators had met in person before. We demonstrate what we can achieve when collaboration between applied and basic research labs can pivot to perform research that is useful to society in times of crisis, beyond national borders,” said Athale.
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The study – published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) journal, Science Advances, on May 29 – brought together researchers from Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia and India to test whether laboratories across different countries can reproduce critical biological reagents using shared protocols and locally available resources.
The research was led by professor Keith Pardee from the department of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Toronto, with contributions from professor Chaitanya Athale’s laboratory at IISER Pune’s department of biology.
The project was inspired by challenges exposed during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the global response was often hampered by dependence on centralised manufacturing and disrupted supply chains for diagnostic and research materials.
Using cell-free systems and synthetic biology techniques, the researchers successfully produced high-quality reagents required to manufacture proteins used in molecular diagnostic methods such as loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and toehold RNA detection, as well as peptide-based vaccine candidates.
