Sunflower Therapeutics Announces the First System Delivery and Installation of the Daisy Petal™ Perfusion Bioreactor System to BioBuilder

By: Sunflower Therapeutics via Business Wire

May 19, 2025 at 09:05 AM EDT

The first delivery and installation of the Daisy Petal™ to BioBuilder’s Learning Lab

Sunflower Therapeutics (Sunflower), a public benefit corporation transforming global access to protein manufacturing capacity for diverse applications, announced today the first system delivery and installation of its Daisy Petal™ Perfusion Bioreactor System to the BioBuilder Education Foundation, a nonprofit offering innovative ways to teach, learn, and explore cutting-edge science and engineering. This marks the first system delivery of the Daisy Petal™ in the United States, a significant step in the company’s ongoing product commercialization.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250519747596/en/

Daisy Petal™ Perfusion Bioreactor System in BioBuilder's Allston Learning Lab

The system is installed in the newly commissioned BioBuilder Learning Lab space in Allston Labworks for use in training local students, educators, and incumbent workers to be a passionate part of the growing biotechnology workforce.

"The bioeconomy is growing, and we need to be ready to manufacture our own biomolecules with cutting-edge protein manufacturing solutions. For the breadth of growth that the bioeconomy will need, we will require a large workforce,” said Dr. Kerry R. Love, Founder and CEO of Sunflower Therapeutics. "Sunflower is committed to supporting educational initiatives to grow the next generation of workers in our sector and there is no better place than Boston’s vibrant biotech ecosystem to launch this effort. The Daisy Petal™ is the ideal tool—simple, intuitive, and user-friendly enough for a high school student to operate, yet robust and engineered to meet the rigorous demands of GMP process development and manufacturing."

Sunflower’s innovative Daisy Petal™ perfusion fermentation system uses automation and know-how to replace complexity with simplicity. The single-use assembly is designed specifically for intuitive installation and a simple user experience. The Daisy Petal™ is a cutting-edge protein manufacturing solution that is the ideal tool for non-expert users to learn how to perform fermentation and expert users to maximize their efficiency.

“Having the Sunflower fermenter in our Allston Learning Lab ensures that local high school students can engage with the same tools and techniques used in industry," said Dr. Natalie Kuldell, founder and executive director of the BioBuilder Educational Foundation. "This instrument will expand our teaching capacity in ways that directly address gaps in the bioeconomy workforce, while also giving students a leg up and the foundation for great careers in biomanufacturing. We're not just teaching science - we're opening doors to meaningful careers."

The system’s hardware and controls are engineered and optimized for in-vessel perfusion, utilizing a purpose-built disposable stirred tank reactor outfitted with a unique in-vessel perfusion device that enables greater volumetric productivity from the bench through scale-up manufacturing. With this approach, the system boasts space-time yield benefits five-to-ten times greater compared to traditional fed-batch methods for the production of diverse biomolecules, including biologic drugs, reagents, diagnostics, vaccines, foods, and other biologically derived materials.

BioBuilder’s purchase of the Daisy Petal was made possible through a grant from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center and other donors.

To learn more about Sunflower’s accessible approach to bioprocessing, please visit sunflowertx.com.

About Sunflower Therapeutics

Sunflower Therapeutics is a unique biotech with a mission to transform bioeconomies worldwide by creating accessible solutions for protein product development and commercial manufacturing. Using our core technologies – an efficient host, data-driven methods for process development, and continuous biomanufacturing equipment – our team aims to democratize bioprocessing.

About BioBuilder

Created by an award-winning team from MIT, BioBuilder is a nonprofit helping educate a future-ready workforce that will solve some of the world’s greatest challenges by bringing tomorrow’s science into today’s classrooms. BioBuilder has worked with schools in over 55 countries and 49 states, impacting over 63,000 students. By inspiring students and educators to learn and love science, we equip the next generation through experiential learning opportunities tailored to high school students. Through in-classroom, after school, and dedicated cohort programs, we are providing exposure to real-world STEM applications to students in urban, rural and underserved communities. By matching our curriculum with the needs of the biotech industry, our goal is to bring BioBuilder to every school in America. For more information about BioBuilder, visit www.biobuilder.org.