Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing With Pionic®
Designed by the Life Science Industry—for the Life Science Industry
Biopharmaceutical companies are under constant pressure to reduce costs, time, footprint, and resource use while improving yield, quality, and productivity. However, regulatory constraints, risk aversion, and legacy infrastructure often slow the adoption of new technologies.
Pionic® breaks through these barriers with a modular, ready-to-use platform for chromatography, filtration, viral inactivation, and ultrafiltration | diafiltration. Developed in collaboration with leading CDMOs and biomanufacturers, Pionic® reflects the real-world needs of the industry.
The system can be integrated into new and existing facilities and supports GMP compliance, real-time monitoring, and process control. With flexible modules like Spin, Dual, Quad, and Cross—plus the Flow system for in-line dilution—Pionic® simplifies operations, reduces risk, and accelerates process intensification for the future of biomanufacturing.
Pionic® performs all essential downstream unit operations: each one can be intensified individually or connected to enable continuous processing. System hardware, flow kits, control, and orchestration software can also be reconfigured to suit specific production requirements. This flexibility supports faster changeovers, simplified qualification, and a broader process coverage across volumes and titers.
Pionic® delivers a fully automated and orchestrated continuous downstream platform, enhanced by robust analytics for precise process control. It is the only out-of-the-box automation solution for continuous downstream processing, including process handling and equipment management. This saves months of engineering and qualification work, and drastically reduces the risks of implementation.
Ready-to-use systems and disposable flow kits are validated and qualified for closed and aseptic processing lasting up to 28 days. Each flow kit supports the full duration of a perfusion process or multiple batches of the same fed-batch product, maximizing resource use and reducing OPEX.
Explore More About Pionic
Strategic Insights From the Experts Behind Pionic®
As biopharma manufacturing shifts toward intensified and continuous processing, Sartorius brought together three of its top experts to share the thinking behind a transformative new solution: Pionic®.
In this exclusive roundtable discussion, Jan Schaefer, Dr. Geert Lissens, and Paul Cashen reflect on the strategic challenges driving change—and how their cross-functional collaboration with global biomanufacturers shaped every facet of Pionic® platform.
What emerges is not just a product story, but a strategic blueprint for modern bioprocessing. From initial design thinking to modular architecture and automation-first engineering, the platform is the result of deep domain expertise, rigorous customer co-development, and a commitment to future-ready manufacturing.
Pionic® enables manufacturers to evolve at their own pace—whether through stepwise intensification or fully continuous processing—while reducing footprint, increasing throughput, and building compliance and connectivity from the start.
Why Pionic® matters:
Co-developed with leading biomanufacturers to address real-world intensification challenges
Strategic modular design for flexibility, scalability, and phased implementation
Automation and orchestration integrated from the start
Purpose-built modules optimized for each process step
Platform architecture aligned with the future of continuous manufacturing
Explore how these three experts translated insight into innovation—and why Pionic® represents a strategic shift in bioprocessing.
The next generation of continuous low pH virus inactivation
Pionic® Spin streamlines low pH virus inactivation process control with predefined strategies and automated exception handling. Adaptable across capture and bioreactor modes, it ensures unmatched pH control stability, smooth integration, and 28-day process duration. The compact, plug-flow incubator design allows efficient flow-through viral inactivation, supporting easy installation, rapid changeovers, and consistent product quality across processes.
Effective integration of continuous filtration and chromatography processes
Pionic® Dual system integrates both normal flow filtration and continuous chromatography solutions. Together with Pionic® Flow module, it performs in-line dilution to optimize cleanroom footprint and carries out fluid adjustment to ensure the right conditions for the next unit operation. The system operates in sequential mode, enabling a continuous flow manufacturing process.
Plug-And-Play Automation for Pionic®—Built for Bioprocessing Flexibility
Biobrain® is a modular automation platform purpose-built for the dynamic demands of Pionic® process units. It combines robust industrial hardware and software with fully traceable, flexible configuration, allowing for fast adaptation to evolving process requirements. With full OPC UA support for both monitoring and control, Biobrain® integrates seamlessly with higher-level systems such as DCS (e.g., DeltaV) and MES platforms, ensuring smooth interoperability across the plant. Designed to meet industry standards and the demands of Bioprocessing 4.0, Biobrain® enables faster deployment, simplified reconfiguration, and a future-proof digital foundation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Continuous manufacturing refers to the production of pharmaceutical products in a constant flow. Raw materials are fed and products are produced continuously, rather than in batches.
In batch processes, all steps are carried out in separate, time-separated units. In the continuous process, all steps occur in a connected, real-time flow, reducing downtime and increasing efficiency.
The key challenges include risk aversion, resistance to change due to a lack of references and data availability, resource-intensive modification of existing infrastructure, product quality concerns, and complex processing.
Thanks to better time utilization in continuous manufacturing, equipment and chromatography columns are smaller compared to traditional setups. This reduction in size decreases the cost of goods and minimizes the footprint. The downstream process is also executed more quickly, increasing throughput and enabling a higher number of batches per year. Another significant benefit of improved time management is the ability to expand process coverage, allowing the same continuous downstream line to accommodate more upstream process cases.
Integrated bioprocessing helps minimize resource consumption (water, energy, and materials), reduces waste, supports the efficient use of components through single-use, modular systems. It also improves yield, minimizes failed batches, and lowers the carbon footprint via streamlined operations.
Continuous manufacturing is a downstream process strategy that is compatible with many upstream approaches, including traditional fed-batch, concentrated fed-batch, N-1 perfusion and dynamic perfusion. For example, a 2,000 L fed-batch bioreactor can be processed in 1 or 2 days in a continuous process.
Pionic® is a registered trademark of Sartorius Stedim Biotech GmbH. For details on the registrations, please refer to Patents and Trademarks.
