What is it about?
Capsular polysaccharides of Streptococcus pneumoniae are employed to produce conjugate vaccines. To obtain them, it is necessary to cultivate the microorganism in fermentors. S. pneumoniae is a Gram-positive bacterium that grows without oxygen. After growing, air is added to the culture and the polysaccharide attached to the cell wall is released to the medium.
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Why is it important?
The strategy of cultivation allowed us to reach high cell concentration first and then increase polysaccharide in the supernatant of the culture, which facilitates the downstream process for polysaccharide purification. High product concentration and ease of purification are important to reduce the production costs, ultimately leading to cheaper vaccines, which are crucial to make them available for the global population.
Perspectives
This article shows how important is the development of the production process of vaccines, because consistent high-yield processes can reduce the costs of the vaccines, helping all people to have access to them.
Dr. Viviane Maimoni Goncalves
Instituto Butantan
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Introduction of air in the anaerobic culture of Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 23F induces the release of capsular polysaccharide from bacterial surface into the cultivation medium, Journal of Applied Microbiology, November 2006, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2672.2006.03012.x.
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