Team:IISc-Bangalore/HP/Gold Integrated
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Lupin
Lupin is the seventh-largest biopharmaceutical company in the world by market capitalization, specializing in manufacturing biosimilars and therapeutics. Lupin Research Park — headquartered in Pune, India — hosts the R&D program and is home to over 1400 scientists who work on drug design, manufacturing and delivery.
As part of our initiative to collaborate with industry and discover how gas vesicles' unique properties could be exploited, we contacted Lupin and requested a meeting with their Head of Downstream Processing to discuss our project ideas and potential applications.
In mid-July, the week after the iGEM India Meet-Up at IISER Pune, we entered Lupin's R&D facility — leaving all our electronics with security (making us unable to photographically document our journey) — to discover a whole new world... Held to industrial biosafety standards, Lupin's environment was spartan. Fire extinguishers, emergency exits, spill clean-up cabinets and personal protective equipment stands were displayed prominently, emphasizing the importance of safety in such a well-regulated industry.
After a short wait at reception, we were ushered to a conference room with the Head of Downstream Processing and a Principal Research Scientist — Dr Bhaskar Jyoti Prasad — our guide for the day. In that official setting, we pitched our project idea — iFLOAT 1.0 — to them and explained to them the features of gas vesicles that might make them attractive for industrial applications.
FLOATeins
Our initial idea — using gas vesicles for protein purification — was met with some skepticism. The cost of producing gas vesicles in bulk was raised.
