Ishan Barman, professor of mechanical engineering, has been awarded a research grant through the Cohen Translational Engineering Fund. The fund, a maximum of $100,000 for a nine-month project, serves as a catalyst for translating cutting-edge research into practice by providing faculty with critical early funding and is designed to help researchers further develop and characterize their technology with a focus on commercial application.
Barman’s project, “D-SENSE: Deep Learning-Powered Digital SERS for Rapid and Ultrasensitive Bioprocess Monitoring,” is a low-cost, label-free, and highly robust bioanalytical method for monitoring biopharmaceutical manufacturing.
The production of biopharmaceuticals – complex biologic medicines like monoclonal antibodies, viral vectors, and cell therapies – represents a growing market as more of these therapeutics are approved and enter the market. Ensuring consistent quality of these materials is paramount to their safety and clinical success, but current monitoring methods are costly, require substantial analysis time, and can cause production delays. There is a need for real-time process analytical technologies that can monitor key cell culture parameters to reduce batch failure risk and improve manufacturing yields.
Barman and his team developed a real-time monitoring technology that can quickly and accurately check the health and quality of cells grown to produce biopharmaceuticals. The technology involves mixing a small sample of cell culture growth medium with colloidal gold nanoparticles and then using digital surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) coupled with deep learning to detect and quantify critical analytes and product quality characteristics. Requiring only minutes to analyze samples, this approach is much faster and more efficient than traditional process analytical technologies, and it can be easily integrated into existing manufacturing processes.
“As a lab focused on translational research, JHTV has been an invaluable partner—helping us secure IP protection early and guiding us through the application process for the Cohen Translational Fund,” Barman said. “Their support has enabled us to pursue commercialization pathways that would be difficult to navigate alone. With our recent efforts to advance real-time monitoring technologies for biomanufacturing, this support has been especially timely. We see real potential in the broader JHTV ecosystem, from access to incubator space to future partnering opportunities.”
The team plans to use the funding to support technical development of the D-SENSE analysis platform, perform pilot testing, and achieve system integration with a bioreactor for real-time, continuous monitoring of cell culture medium with validated sensitivity and stability.