Every year, cutting-edge biomedical technologies are left stranded in the lab, not for lack of innovation, but because they miss the crucial leap from technical performance to genuine industry adoption. The gap between scientific brilliance and commercial success is deceptively simple: deeply understanding and building for your customer’s real-world pain points.

In this episode, David Brühlmann welcomes Chervee Ho, CEO & Co-Founder of BioChromatographix International. With a background at the intersection of biotechnology and commercial strategy, Chervee has helped reshape how startups approach product development to actually get adopted in conservative markets. From her early days in biotech to launching Singapore’s next-generation monolithic chromatography company, Chervee advocates for honest conversations, real customer feedback, and an unflinching commitment to building solutions that people want - not just what scientists think they need.

Here are three reasons you can’t afford to miss this conversation:

• Commercial Thinking from Day One: Technical superiority is just the start; Chervee reveals how embedding commercial strategy from the earliest stages, long before the product is ‘perfect’, ensures your innovation will actually be used. Start with end-user needs and map backward.
• Designing for Adoption, Not Just Performance: Don’t fall in love with your tech. Discover how BioChromatographix adopted a customer-centric “design for adoption” approach, integrating products into current workflows, minimizing disruption, and collecting real-life feedback that shaped commercial-ready solutions.
• Bridging the Science-to-Market Divide: Learn how continuous customer engagement, ruthless validation of pain points, and smart use of public data (even while protecting IP) can transform a great idea into a market-ready, trust-building product.

Ready to close the gap between invention and adoption? Tune in to discover why commercial thinking isn’t just for the sales team and how it’s the secret weapon for any biotech scientist wanting to make a lasting impact.

Don’t just innovate - get your technology into the hands of those who need it most.

Connect with Chervee Ho:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cherveeho

Website: www.biochromatographix.com

Next step:

Book a free consultation to help you get started on any questions you may have about bioprocess development: https://bruehlmann-consulting.com/call

🧬 Ready to eliminate CMC chaos and hit your IND timeline with absolute certainty? Get the complete Notion CMC Dashboard at https://stan.store/SmartBiotech/p/cmc-dashboard-for-biotech-founders - the proven roadmap that's guided successful mAb programs to hit their IND submission deadlines.

Join 500+ CGT leaders at Advanced Therapies Europe 2025 (September 2-4, Barcelona) for live case studies, regulatory insights, and exclusive collaboration opportunities. As a Smart Biotech Scientist listener, you’ll save 20% with code SMARTPODCAST20 – Register here

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What if the secret to making continuous bioprocessing practical, sustainable, and far simpler has been shaking - literally - just beneath our feet?

For years, the industry has grappled with the complexities of continuous manufacturing, with technologies like ATF (alternating tangential flow) steadily dominating the perfusion landscape. But what if there's a game-changer right around the corner - a technology that vibrates membranes, not workflows, promising both higher performance and a greener footprint?

Enter Jarno Robin, a pioneering force in membrane filtration and Pharma Business Development Director at Sani Membranes. With two decades of experience implementing ATF and championing continuous innovation in bioprocessing, Jarno isn’t just speculating about change—he’s building it. In this episode, host David Brühlmann gets hands-on with Jarno as they unpack Sani’s patented Vibro Membrane Filtration (VMF) technology and its bold promise to transform upstream and downstream bioprocessing.

Here are three reasons you can’t afford to miss this conversation:

• Vibration Over Crossflow: Sani’s VMF system shakes up conventional wisdom by using vibration to generate turbulence, achieving uniform transmembrane pressure, reducing cell damage, and enabling robust, scalable separations across applications from mAbs to cultivated meat and even challenging mRNA workflows.
• Seamless Tech Swap (and Sustainability): Transitioning from ATF or TFF to VMF? Jarno explains how the setup is surprisingly straightforward, requires fewer connections at scale, dramatically cuts chemical use, and can slash your environmental footprint, as membranes last years instead of months.
• Innovation Demands Resilience: Beyond equipment specs, Jarno pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to drive innovation in pharma: relentless belief, hours of extra work, and the patience to let good data - and internal advocates - build momentum for change.

Ready to see bioprocessing through a new lens? Tune in to discover how vibrating membranes may help you simplify your CMC development pipeline, reduce waste, and position your organization for a more continuous, efficient future.

Connect with Jarno Robin:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jarno-robin

Website: www.sanimembranes.com

Curious about continuous processing challenges and breakthroughs? Don’t miss these previous episodes.

• Episodes 39-40: Balancing Perfusion Process Development and Sustainability with Jochen Sieck
• Episodes 85-86: Bioprocess 4.0: Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing with Massimo Morbidelli
• Episodes 153-154: The Future of Bioprocessing: Industry 4.0, Digital Twins, and Continuous Manufacturing Strategies with Tiago Matos

Next step:

Book a free consultation to help you get started on any questions you may have about bioprocess development: https://bruehlmann-consulting.com/call

🧬 Ready to eliminate CMC chaos and hit your IND timeline with absolute certainty? Get the complete Notion CMC Dashboard at https://stan.store/SmartBiotech/p/cmc-dashboard-for-biotech-founders - the proven roadmap that's guided successful mAb programs to hit their IND submission deadlines.

Support the show

What if one of biotech’s biggest production breakthroughs was hiding in plain sight? Not in a new gene or a wonder drug, but in the way we process and purify biologics.

Perfusion technology, once dismissed as a pipedream in top biopharma boardrooms, is now quietly powering some of the industry’s most efficient and productive manufacturing platforms. Yet, transforming perfusion from controversial buzzword to gold standard required timing, vision, and a willingness to break from tradition.

In this episode, host David Brühlmann sits down with Jarno Robin, a bioprocessing pioneer whose 20+ year journey spans industry giants like Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Leo Pharma. Jarno has championed upstream continuous processes, including ATF and TFF, for decades, and now, as a leader at Sani Membranes, he’s unleashing the next evolution: Vibro® Membrane Filtration, an innovation set to upend conventional wisdom about fouling, pressure loss, scalability, energy usage, and more.

Here are three reasons you’ll want to listen to Jarno’s journey:

• Innovation Versus Industry Inertia: Behind every platform shift are years of resistance. Jarno recounts how timing, advocacy, and matching the right data with the right decision-makers finally made perfusion mainstream, even after company leaders proclaimed, “We will never ever run perfusion.”
• State-of-the-Art and the Next Frontier: ATF and TFF remain dominant, but their limitations, like membrane fouling, scale-up headaches, and high energy needs, are real. Jarno explains how Vibro® Membrane Filtration addresses these pain points with a radically new design, offering lower pressure loss, less fouling, higher cell densities, and surprisingly low energy consumption.
• Practical Wisdom for Bioprocess Developers: Should you always run a control in process development? How do you translate lab-scale wins to robust, money-earning production? Jarno shares counterintuitive advice based on decades of hands-on success and mistakes.

Curious how you can optimize your process technology and sidestep costly pitfalls? Listen to this episode and discover how “timing is everything” in bioprocessing innovation and whether new filtration methods could help you leap ahead.

Connect with Jarno Robin:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jarno-robin

Website: www.sanimembranes.com

Curious about continuous processing challenges and breakthroughs? Don’t miss these previous episodes.

• Episodes 39-40: Balancing Perfusion Process Development and Sustainability with Jochen Sieck
• Episodes 85-86: Bioprocess 4.0: Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing with Massimo Morbidelli
• Episodes 153-154: The Future of Bioprocessing: Industry 4.0, Digital Twins, and Continuous Manufacturing Strategies with Tiago Matos

Next step:

Book a free consultation to help you get started on any questions you may have about bioprocess development: https://bruehlmann-consulting.com/call

🧬 Ready to eliminate CMC chaos and hit your IND timeline with absolute certainty? Get the complete Notion CMC Dashboard at https://stan.store/SmartBiotech/p/cmc-dashboard-for-biotech-founders

Join 500+ CGT leaders at Advanced Therapies Europe 2025 (September 2-4, Barcelona) for live case studies, regulatory insights, and exclusive collaboration opportunities. As a Smart Biotech Scientist listener, you’ll save 20% with code SMARTPODCAST20 – Register here

Support the show