Thanks a lot for your expertise and notes here! For context, how expensive are the single-use bioreactor bags? Both right now and realistic projections 5,10,20 years out?
I’m wondering to what extent this is something where the costs would seem very cheap for biopharma applications but too expensive for a commodity.
The internet claims about $30K for a 1K L bag, do these numbers seem approximately right to you? If so, how amenable are costs to >10x decreases?
Having never purchased a SUB myself, I don’t know the exact cost, but $30k for 1000L bag seems ballpark correct for biopharma. That all said, it’s just a big ’ol plastic bag, I would bet that a food-grade version could be at least 10x cheaper.
Looking at the materials (Single-use bioreactor—Wikipedia), these are all very typical polymers that should be quite cheap (in theory at least). You could get away with food grade plastics, which should be significantly cheaper than pharma grade.
SUBs have also only become popular relatively recently. My major biopharma employer only started using SUBs in a significant fashion in the last decade. My point being, I bet there is still room for improvement in manufacturing costs since SUBs are a relatively recent innovation.
Just to hedge a bit, it’s a bit hard for me to give you exact numbers here in terms of how much room for improvement there truly is. I’m not a materials scientist and don’t have intimate knowledge of SUB construction. It’s entirely possible there is some super expensive step required to make those things, that just can’t feasibly be reduced.
Thanks a lot for your expertise and notes here! For context, how expensive are the single-use bioreactor bags? Both right now and realistic projections 5,10,20 years out?
I’m wondering to what extent this is something where the costs would seem very cheap for biopharma applications but too expensive for a commodity.
The internet claims about $30K for a 1K L bag, do these numbers seem approximately right to you? If so, how amenable are costs to >10x decreases?
Having never purchased a SUB myself, I don’t know the exact cost, but $30k for 1000L bag seems ballpark correct for biopharma. That all said, it’s just a big ’ol plastic bag, I would bet that a food-grade version could be at least 10x cheaper.
Looking at the materials (Single-use bioreactor—Wikipedia), these are all very typical polymers that should be quite cheap (in theory at least). You could get away with food grade plastics, which should be significantly cheaper than pharma grade.
SUBs have also only become popular relatively recently. My major biopharma employer only started using SUBs in a significant fashion in the last decade. My point being, I bet there is still room for improvement in manufacturing costs since SUBs are a relatively recent innovation.
Just to hedge a bit, it’s a bit hard for me to give you exact numbers here in terms of how much room for improvement there truly is. I’m not a materials scientist and don’t have intimate knowledge of SUB construction. It’s entirely possible there is some super expensive step required to make those things, that just can’t feasibly be reduced.