Applied Microbiology and Beneficial Microbes

Clarence M. Ongkudon who graduated with PhD in Bioprocess Engineering from Monash University, Australia in 2011 is the coordinator of the Bioengineering Research Group (BERG) in Biotechnology Research Institute (BRI) of University Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia. Dr. Clarence has contributed significantly to the field of bioprocess and biochemical engineering where he develops and creates valuable biomolecules from complex cellular materials in the form of therapeutic vectors and products for vaccination and gene therapy application. Dr. Clarence’s most significant contribution to this research field has been the creation of patentable intellectual properties and new knowledge in the field of biomolecule recognition/purification. This has resulted in 2 international patents within the last 5 years. Dr. Clarence has developed an integrated design and downstream process technology that allows a single-stage rapid purification of homogeneous and supercoiled plasmid DNA vaccine on analytical, semi-preparative and preparative scales. This body of work has been a major breakthrough in bioprocess engineering, as purification of plasmid DNA for product development can now be performed rapidly at high throughput with reduced number of unit operations required in downstream processing and increased productivity. This has sparked interests from numerous internationally renowned companies including Boehringer Ingelheim, Qiagen, Promega, Gen Script, Pall, Millipore and Sartorius. Dr. Clarence has published extensively for the past 3 years (over 20 journal and conference publications) in the fields of upstream and downstream processing of therapeutic biomolecules, baculovirus and recombinant proteins. Dr. Clarence aims to create a platform for collaborative projects that work at the cutting edge of biotechnology - drawing together knowledge from medicine, engineering and science in order to tackle biotechnology problems in Malaysia and the world at large.