NEB^® TV Ep. 13 – How Enzymes are Made

Deana Martin:
Welcome to NEB TV. Today, I'm joined by Dave Hough and Jenna Ware, two of our product managers, and we're talking about how enzymes are made.

Deana Martin:
In our Science in 60, Jenna is going to tell us a little bit about NEB's quality commitment, and then Dave and Jenna are gonna give us a tour of the facility, making stops each way as we talk about enzyme manufacturing.  Are you ready?

David Hough:
Let's go.

Jenna Ware:
Ready.

Deana Martin:
Great.

Jenna Ware:
NEB is committed to supplying the highest quality products backed by unmatched technical support. Our quality team is responsible for developing stringent quality standards that assess product attributes and physical purity. Many of our enzymes are recombinant, which helps to ensure reproducibility and minimize lot-to-lot variation. To be sure that you get the information that you need, our scientists here at NEB participate in our technical support. Furthermore, NEB is ISO 13485 and 9001 certified, and we are committed to meeting the highest standards of compliance. To learn more about NEB's commitment to quality, please visit neb.com/quality.

David Hough:
This is our fermentation suite. Within this lab, all of our native strains and clones are stored. Depending upon a product's demand, a certain volume of fermentation, we require to be grown. From that, a cell mass will be harvested, they'll be lysed, clarified, and then that clarified lysate is appropriate to be transitioned upstairs to purification.

This is our scale up purification and process development facility. It's the final destination for the clarified lysate that came out of fermentation. The two groups that are housed here in this laboratory really do work hand-in-hand to develop a streamline and efficient process for manufacturing our proteins.

The process development group uses high throughput methodology and equipment to find the best steps for purification. The scale up purification team will take that data from the process development group and apply it to purification. The goal of purification is to come up with a method that's both scale-able and reproducible.

Jenna Ware:
We're here in one of our quality control labs, which are independent of our production department here at New England BioLabs. There are several around the building, all of which are responsible for making sure that our products pass the stringent quality controls that we set for them. We rely on cutting edge technologies to assess a products' attributes and physical purity.

David Hough:
This is our packaging facility. Within this suite, we have several custom-built vialing machines. These vialing machines handle the vast majority of vialing of both our buffers and enzymes. The machines are designed to handle thousands of vials of fill every hour. Included in that, however, there's a level of quality control within the design. The pumps can handle very stringent sterilization procedures. The silicon tubing that we're using is single-use disposable. This is done to assure that cross-contamination events don't occur.

Jenna Ware:
This is our shipping department. This is the last stop for our products before they reach the customer. We process hundreds of orders each day with the goal of having them reach the customer the very next day. We use several levels of bar code technology to ensure accuracy for the products and make sure that every customer receives exactly what they ordered.

Deana Martin:
Thanks so much for joining us today.

Jenna Ware:
Sure.

Deana Martin:
That was really interesting. If you have any questions about our products or suggestions as to how we can improve our products, packaging, or technical support, please email us at info@neb.com, and as always, if you have any suggestions for future episodes, please let us know.