The Equipment to Scale It. The People Who Know How.
A complete upstream and downstream bioprocess suite in Northeast Tennessee — run it yourself and keep costs low, or hand the work to our team. Two ways to work, one path from petri dish to MVP.
Two ways to work with us
Know exactly how to run your process? Use our equipment and keep your costs down. Need the work done? Our team staffs it and runs it for you.
Do it yourself
You bring the know-how and the people. We provide the lab, the equipment suite, safety oversight, and the training to get your team running on it.
- The lowest-cost path to real scale-up capacity
- Your team staffs and runs the process on your schedule
- Onboarding, safety, and equipment training included
- Best for teams with hands-on bioprocess experience
We do it for you
Our scientists staff the project, run the equipment, and hand back data and material. Contract development and research without building a lab of your own or hiring a bioprocess team.
- We staff the project and run the process end to end
- Sterile technique, equipment operation, and process development handled
- Data and material delivered back to you
- Best for teams with the science but not the bench capacity
The expertise comes with the building
Biomanufacturing has a high barrier to entry. The equipment is expensive, the processes are specialized, and the skill set is genuinely hard to hire. That is the real reason promising work stalls between the idea and the product — not a shortage of good science.
Our team already has that skill set. Faculty groups at ETSU and Tennessee State have brought us projects for exactly this reason: having the idea and being able to execute it at the bench are two different things.
- Fermentation and cell culture
- Downstream purification and process development
- Sterile technique and equipment operation
- Scale-up from bench toward pilot
- Safety and compliance oversight
From petri dish to MVP
A clear scale-up path upstream, and a full range of options for prototyping your bioprocess downstream.
Upstream
- Biometric shake flasks, up to 8 parallel ferments; DO, biomass, fluorescence sensing
- Incubated orbital shakers, heating/cooling, UV sanitization, CO₂ capable
- 1L & 5L benchtop bioreactors, automation trials and material generation
Downstream separation
- 6L centrifuge, fast separation for shear-tolerant products
- Tangential flow filtration (TFF), gentle, size-based; diafiltration washes
- FPLC chromatography, affinity purification of enzymes, proteins, biologics
Drying & finishing
- Spray drying, fast and economical; temperature-tolerant products
- Freeze drying (lyophilization), gentle, for heat-sensitive biologics
- Slurry to a stable, shippable powder ready for downstream customers
Where most facilities stop, we keep going
Bioreactors are table stakes. Plenty of places have them, and without them you cannot play the game at all. The difference shows up after the ferment. We run a complete downstream suite covering every fundamental purification technology type, so whatever bioproduct you are after, you have the tools to purify it.
- Centrifugation — fast separation for shear-tolerant products
- Tangential flow filtration — gentle, size-based, with diafiltration washes
- FPLC chromatography — affinity purification of enzymes, proteins, and biologics
- Spray drying — fast and economical for temperature-tolerant products
- Freeze drying — gentle lyophilization for heat-sensitive biologics
Hear from our partners
Companies building at Valleybrook, in their words.
The same capabilities serve a national mission
The equipment and expertise that scale your bioprocess are also building defense-ready capacity in Appalachia. As an institutional member of BioMADE and the Defense Industrial Base Consortium, an Awardable solution on DARPA’s ERIS Marketplace, and a partner in the proposed $100 million CAMR antibiotic-manufacturing initiative, the Research Corporation puts emerging biotechnology to work on national priorities. Emerging biotechnology is now a national security issue, and this region is at the table.
Tell us what you are trying to make
Whether you want the keys to the equipment or a team to run it, the conversation starts the same way.