A fungal strain isolated from rotten banana and identified as Aspergillus alliaceus was found capable of producing thermostable extracellular β-galactosidase enzyme. Optimum cultural conditions for β-galactosidase production by A. alliaceus were as follows: pH 4.5; temperature, 30 °C; inoculum age, 25 h; and fermentation time, 144 h. Optimum temperature, time, and pH for enzyme substrate reaction were found to be 45 °C, 20 min, and 7.2, respectively, for crude and partially purified enzyme. For immobilized enzyme-substrate reaction, these three variable, temperature, time, and pH were optimized at 50 °C, 40 min, and 7.2, respectively. Glucose was found to inhibit the enzyme activity. The K(m) values of partially purified and immobilized enzymes were 170 and 210 mM, respectively. Immobilized enzyme retained 43 % of the β-galactosidase activity of partially purified enzyme. There was no significant loss of activity on storage of immobilized beads at 4 °C for 28 days. Immobilized enzyme retained 90 % of the initial activity after being used four times.

Hybridoma HB-8696 produces monoclonal antibody (mAb) 520C9 (mouse IgG(1)), which recognizes breast cancer oncoprotein c-erbB2. The objective of this study was to optimize the medium recipe of HB 8696 cell for production of mAb 520C9. The optimization consisted of two steps: (1) screening of significant nutrients to make subsequent experiments more efficient with less runs and (2) locating their optimal concentrations. 29 variables including essential and non-essential amino acids, glucose, serum and 6 salts, namely NaCl, KCl, CaCl(2), NaH(2)PO(4), MgSO(4) and Na-pyruvate were chosen in screening phase. The Plackett-Burman method was used to screen the variables influencing mAb production. Seven factors namely glucose, serum, asparagine, threonine, serine, NaCl and NaH(2)PO(4) were identified to have a positive influencing role on mAb production with a confidence level >90 % (p < 0.1). Finally, Response surface methodology revealed the optimal level of the variables. The mAb production and average specific mAb production rate were enhanced by 111.05 and 105 %, respectively, compared to control medium.

The hybridoma cell line, HB-8696, produces a monoclonal antibody, 520C9 (mouse IgG(1)) that recognizes the breast cancer oncoprotein, c-erbB2. The effect of perfusion rate (volume of fresh feed/working volume of reactor/day) on cell growth and mAb production was investigated but perfusion at a constant rate and at an arbitrarily increased rate could not maintain exponential cell growth or a higher specific mAb production rate. An optimum step-up/step-down perfusion strategy is therefore proposed for maintaining a steady state production phase at high cell density for ten days. The optimum step-up perfusion could achieve fast cell growth by avoiding any nutrient limited condition and the following optimum step-down perfusion could potentially maintain high live cell density and reduced product dilution as well. The maximum viable cell achieved under optimum perfusion strategy was 2.3 × 10(7) cells/ml which was 19-fold higher than in optimum batch culture. The mAb yield and volumetric productivity were significantly improved to 52 and 50 mg/l day compared to 25 and 3.8 mg/l day in optimum batch, respectively, and could be maintained for up to ten days.

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