Assessment of fed-batch, semicontinuous, and continuous epothilone D production processes

Epothilone D is a member of a class of potent antineoplastic natural products produced by myxobacteria. Previously, we have described a fed-batch epothilone D production process in which an adsorber resin is incorporated into the bioreactor setup to capture and stabilize the product in situ, preventing its degradation within the bioreactor. The capture of epothilone D by these relatively large resin beads enables the development of continuous and semicontinuous culturing systems incorporating bead retention mechanisms to completely retain the product within the bioreactor, increasing the epothilone D product titer by almost 3-fold in both cases over a baseline fed-batch system. These product retention strategies, described here for production of the epothilones, are generally applicable to any system using adsorber resins as a method to capture product during a microbial cultivation.