INTERPHEX 2025: Automation for Protein Manufacturing

Biomanufacturing involves complex operations and thousands of skilled workers, says Kerry Love, co-founder and CEO of Sunflower Therapeutics, a biotech company specializing in continuous and fully integrated equipment for the production of proteins. Automation can be a way to build quality and reduce human errors, while also allowing workers who might not be as skilled to participate in high-value manufacturing.

“When you use automation in general, you kind of make something that's usually highly complex, with a lot of handoffs and transitions, much less complicated, particularly in continuous bioprocessing," Love says in the interview. "That's actually a great place for automation, because already you're simplifying unit operations and making interfaces between unit operations that oftentimes haven't been there in the past. That's a great way to then layer automation on top of that and ultimately get to walk away solutions like those that we build at Sunflower.”

The Pharmaceutical Technology® Group spoke with Love at INTERPHEX 2025, being held April 1–3 in New York City. Sunflower Therapeutics can be found at Stand 1273.

Click above to watch the interview.

About the speaker

Kerry Love, co-founder and CEO of Sunflower Therapeutics

Kerry Love, PhD, is the co-founder and CEO of Sunflower Therapeutics, a women-owned and led biotechnology company delivering next-generation protein manufacturing solutions that anyone can use to create innovative new medicines, vaccines, foods, and other bio-produced materials. Love is an organic chemist by training, performing her doctoral studies at MIT, and a biotech entrepreneur at heart, having founded two companies and contributed to the starting of many more over the past 20 years.Love has authored more than 40 scientific papers and patents.