The high-throughput process development as we know it is well established in academia and industry. For the execution of automated, miniaturized and parallelized unit operations, robotic instrumentation such as liquid-handling stations (LHS) is applied. Through their ability of automated handling of liquids and multiwell plates LHS have emerged to popular tools in bioprocess development. The work required for the investigation of complex interactions in biotechnological processes can be drastically reduced applying screening procedures on LHS. Further improvements of processes or the implementation of additional operations or new concepts on LHS demand the integration of novel technologies.<br/>Here, two technologies are investigated on their beneficial linkage to LHS-based process development. The first approach is the integration of microfluidic experimentation. Therefore, the "microfluidics-on-liquid-handling station" system was developed. This system allows the execution of microfluidic experiments on a LHS. The pipetting tips of the LHS can reversibly connect to microfluidic channels molded in silicone chips. Furthermore, integrated devices such as plate readers can be utilized due to the multiwell plate based dimensions of the chips. The applicability of this system was shown in various case studies in the biotechnological field. Besides the application for a screening study of flow through nanoparticle photopolymerization also a microfluidic device for the dilution-free absorption measurement in a high throughput format was developed.<br/>The second presented approach is the integration of 3D printing and bioprinting in high-troughput process development. 3D Printing and Bioprinting are among the most promising techniques for various application fields including the biotechnological sector. Nevertheless, the application in the area of downstream processing or in high throughput process development is hardly studied and still undervalued. To underline the applicability of theses techniques in process development, some 3D printing and bioprinting studies are presented. 3D printing is applied for the integration of freshly thoght tools and operations. The implementation of hydrogels in LHS-workflows is shown by the utilization of bioprinting techniques in combination with high-throughput compatible labware.<br/>The presented approaches provide novel powerful tools to further extend the spectrum of applications of liquid handling station based process development.

Expanding the application fields of liquid-handling stations by integrating microfluidics and 3D (bio-)printing

255th National Meeting (2018)

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