An engineering project at the University of Houston has been selected to join a $10 million effort to bring biopharmaceutical manufacturing into the future. The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) chose the lab of Richard Willson, Huffington-Woestemeyer Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UH, as one of eight development projects that it will fund.

Willson and his team are working to develop a mix-and-read antibody measurement system that uses fluorescent materials to determine the amount of antibody present in a sample. The funding for this project is $200,000. This is the first grant UH has received from NIIMBL.

“In the course of the manufacturing processes, it's important to know the concentration of antibody in your sample and this measurement needs to be made many times in a typical manufacturing process,” said Willson in a press release. In the realm of fluorescents, he is also working to pioneer the use of glow sticks to detect biothreats for the U.S. Navy. His discoveries include a fluorescent material that emits one color of light when excited with another color of light.

Antibodies are what immune cells produce in response to alien substances such as bacteria and viruses. Lab-made antibodies, called monoclonal antibodies, have been in use since the 1980s. Antibody treatments now account for some of the world’s top-selling drugs.

“The nice thing about this reagent is that it becomes more fluorescent in the presence of antibodies, and you can determine the amount of antibody present in a sample by using it,” said Willson. “Along with our industrial partners Genentech, Agilent and Bristol Myers Squibb, we think that this might be a useful tool for people who do everything from growing the cells that make the antibodies, to determining concentrations of antibody before purifying them.”

Willson’s team also includes Katerina Kourentzi, research associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UH; Yan Chen, Agilent; Midori Greenwood-Goodwin, Genentech/Roche; and Mathura Raman, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

“One really distinguishing feature of this project is the tight coupling to industry,” said Kourentzi. “We got a lot of guidance from our industrial partners who volunteer to work with us through NIIMBL.” And through that, the technology could make it to the market in record time.