However some goals will be similar to all companies independent of their size, product range or financial situation. Goals such as increasing protein expression, reducing cost of goods, and improving flexibility are all of interest.  The ATF™ System offers many opportunities for achieving these goals, whether through extremely high cell density cultures and protein yields, or through rapid low shear cell harvesting and subsequent downstream simplification.  But it is the combination of several improvements, some dramatic and some simple, that lead to a new paradigm in biologics manufacturing: a “factory of the future”.  This factory can be seen as a small, multiproduct, flexible but highly productive and intensified biomanufacturing facility – and the costs simultaneously reduced. It could be for multi-tonne antibody production, removing the need for large (or even medium) sized steel tanks, or for diverse vaccine manufacture able to have production ramped up quickly in response to local demand.

In assessing the impact of a product such as Refine’s ATF System, the direct improvement in one unit operation, such as achieving a ten fold improvement in bioreactor yield, needs to be understood within the larger manufacturing environment to ensure the specific gain translates to a real achievable outcome at large commercial scale.  An upstream success may cause a downstream bottleneck for example, and so Refine has extended the applications of the ATF System to enable capture the full benefits of process intensification.