•Microbial production, biosynthesis and characterization of levan discussed elaborately.•Physico chemical and biological properties of levan have been reviewed extensively.•Industrial, biomedical and ...pharmaceutical potential of levan has been exploited.
Levan is a homopolymer of fructose naturally obtained from both plants and microorganisms. Microbial levans are more advantageous, economical and industrially feasible with numerous applications. Bacterial levans are much larger than those produced by plants with multiple branches and molecular weights ranging from 2 to 100 million Da. However levans from plants generally have molecular weights ranging from about 2000 to 33,000Da. Microbial levans have wide range of applications in food, medicine, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and commercial industrial sectors. With excellent polymeric medicinal properties and ease of production, microbial levan appear as a valuable and versatile biopolymer of the future. The present article summarizes and discusses the most essential properties of bioactive microbial levan and recent developments in its production, characterization and the emerging applications in health and industry.
Levan is a homopolymer of fructose naturally obtained from both the plants and microorganisms. Along with the general properties of a biopolymer like bio-compatibility, bio-degradability, ...renewability, flexibility, and eco-friendliness, levan also offers some important biomedical properties such as anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, anti-AIDS and hyperglycaemic inhibitor. In this study, we have demonstrated the microbial production of therapeutically potential levan by batch fermentation process in sucrose rich medium using Acetobacter xylinum NCIM 2526. The produced Levan was characterized using various physicochemical techniques such as FTIR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR spectroscopy, TGA and HPLC. The biomedical potential of the isolated A. xylinum levan for its anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory activities was exploited in vitro. Further the present study also focused on the optimization of levan production using one factor at a time approach followed by a statistical method, central composite design (CCD) with selected variables. The yield of levan was increased significantly from 0.54 to 13.25g/L with the optimized variables.
Perfusion cell cultures generate higher viable cell densities (VCD) and volumetric productivity compared to fed-batch cultures. However, due to the limited availability of small-scale perfusion ...models, perfusion systems are seldom used to produce licensed biotherapeutics. This study evaluated two small-scale perfusion mimic protocols to bridge the research-to-production gap. Shake flasks and the ambr250 HT were used to compare centrifugation and in situ gravity settling protocols. The centrifugation protocol achieved a peak VCD >50 million cells/mL and is well-suited to media formulation and feeding strategy comparisons. The in situ gravity settling protocol achieved ∼20 million cells/mL and is well-suited to cell productivity and stability studies. The cell retention steps resulted in temporary DO and pH changes but did not affect the overall culture's health. Further, both protocols were able to recover from an imposed long-duration DO stress, although the centrifugation protocol cultures had higher cell specific oxygen consumption rates indicative of higher culture stress. Both protocols sustained the cultures for 39 days with stable cell specific productivities (∼27 pg/cell·day). Overall, this study demonstrated the feasibility of two economic small-scale perfusion mimic protocols in a standard small-scale bioreactor system, which could be translated to other multi-unit small-scale bioreactor systems.
•Centrifugation perfusion mimic protocol enables media formulation comparisons.•Centrifugation perfusion mimic protocol assists feeding strategy comparisons.•In situ gravity perfusion mimic protocols evaluates cell productivity stability.•Cell specific oxygen uptake rates indicate increased stress for CHO cells.
