Laboratory of
Bioprocesses Development

Dr Joel Sirois

The objective of our team at the Laboratory of Bioprocesses Development is to:

• facilitate population accessibility to novel prescription drugs and to natural origin active compounds, mainly utilized in cosmaceutical and pharmaceutical industries as well as in nutraceutical, food, biochemical and environmental industries.

To do so, our team supports the design of efficient and profitable processes for industrial production of these compounds. We are working at:

1. developing novel bioprocesses for production of active compounds using cell cultures and improving existing processes;

2. developing novel technologies for cell culture, monitoring and data analysis.

Research axes

Our research program splits into 4 leading axes:

A. Developing and intensifying novel bioprocesses for production of bioactive compounds

This research axis comprises two kind of projects. First group of projects aims at:

1. inducing novel plant cell cultures for production of novel compounds;

2. increasing production yields of promising compounds;

3. eliciting production of novel compounds;

4. developing efficient operational strategies.

These projects will enable efficient production of active compounds using cell culture so as to make them available for industrial production as an answer to actual necessities from society.

Second group of projects has the objective of:

1. developing culture, production, harvesting, separation and analysis technologies for low volume sampling (< 1ml).

These projects will enable improvement of research and discovery capacity for research groups and organisms working with cell cultures.

B. Developing algorithms and software probes for real-time optimization of cell metabolism

This axis has the goal of developing and validating algorithms for:

1. data reconciliation so as to improve robustness of estimations;

2. cell physiology and cell metabolism observation as a tool for real-time monitoring of cell cultures;

3. real-time optimization of production efficacy.

These algorithms will enable the estimation of cell physiology and cell metabolism at any time as well as the control of these variables.

C. Designing and developing an efficient monitoring system for bioprocesses

This axis' projects will aim at:

1. identifying significant signals associated with physiology, metabolism and nutritional status;

2. developing, building and validating a real-time measuring system for endogenous biomarkers (2 patents pending) for online monitoring of bioprocesses.

Results from this research axis will enable real-time measurement of cell culture variables as good at industrial scale as at laboratory scale. This will enable implementation of control and online optimization of cell physiology and compounds production.

D. Developing novel biomedical applications

Thanks to fruitful collaborations with researchers from other areas, this research axis aims at using bioactive compounds from cell cultures to develop novel solutions to biomedical problems.

In view of this, the Research team on production and immobilization of (bio-)active compounds (ERPIPA from french acronym) was formed. This research team is the result of a strategic alliance between professors Nathalie Faucheux (cell biomaterial interactions), Richard Blouin (cell biology) and Joël Sirois (production of bioactive compounds) and has the objective to develop and to validate a controlled-release system for synergistic actions to fight cancer as well as to promote healthy tissue regeneration.

Plant cell culture in bioreactor

During the last 18 years our team developed an expertise for therapeutic compound production using suspended plant cell cultures. Our projects enabled acceleration of biomass accumulation and cell division as well as bioactive compounds production.