Fastest
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/continuous-bioprocessing-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Biomedical DevicesContinuous Bioprocessing Patents: Filing Trends and Who Holds the Core Claims
- Filing has cooled since a 2019 peak of 29 records, with the midpoint year 2022 at just 10 — the trend line is flat to declining, not accelerating.
- Bioreactor hardware claims dominate at 176 of 186 records, while genetic engineering (73) and separation processes (51) trail well behind as the next most-claimed layers.
- The most-cited foundational patents date to the early 2000s, meaning the influence signal in this corpus favours legacy disposable-bioreactor designs over recent filings.
186
Published Records
57%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+9%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (11 records) with 2024 (12) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 186 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families filed against perfusion bioreactor, continuous chromatography, and intensified bioprocess claim language, spanning 2015 through mid-2026. The corpus sits at the intersection of bioreactor hardware, cell culture biology, and downstream separation — a combination that shows up in the IPC spread, where bioreactor apparatus (C12M) claims appear in nearly every record and separation processes (B01D) form a distinct second layer.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 and has not returned to that level since; the 2026 count is partial and will rise somewhat as late filings publish, but the multi-year decline through the 2022 midpoint predates that lag. Receiving-office data shows United States filings well ahead of any single non-US office, with PCT and European filings forming a secondary international tier.
Filing activity by year, 2017–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Data
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 186-family corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how claim activity distributes across the IPC subclasses that define this field.
A peak in 2019, then a slide
Filings ran from 15 in 2017 to a peak of 29 in 2019, then eased to 10 by the 2022 midpoint and down to 3 in the still-publishing 2026 window. Read the last one to two years as understated rather than as a genuine collapse, since publication lags filing by roughly 18 months — but the multi-year direction through 2022 is real.
Bioreactor hardware anchors the field
C12M (bioreactors and enzyme apparatus) appears in 176 of 186 records, effectively a prerequisite classification for this search. C12N (microorganisms and genetic engineering, 73) and B01D (separation processes, 51) form the next tier, with C07K peptide claims (34) and C12P fermentation claims (27) thinner still — evidence that hardware and process-control claims are more densely filed than the biology or downstream-purification layers.
Shares are the percentage of the 186 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about continuous bioprocessing landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey Patents
Foundational filings and what leads the corpus today
Representative recent filing
US12227571B2 — Continuous manufacturing process for bispecific antibody products
AMGEN INC.
A continuous upstream manufacturing process for bispecific antibody products with at least two binding domains: a mammalian cell culture is grown in a perfusion bioreactor at a first perfusion rate until a set-point viable cell density is reached, then maintained at a second perfusion rate while keeping the bispecific antibody concentration below a threshold value, before proceeding to downstream purification.Filed by Amgen, granted 2025-02-18 — one of the most recent grants in the dataset and squarely in the two-stage perfusion-rate control pattern.
Most-cited records in this corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6544788B2 | Disposable perfusion bioreactor for cell culture | 271 |
| 2 | US20030036192A1 | Disposable perfusion bioreactor for cell culture | 181 |
| 3 | US20160145563A1 | Distributed perfusion bioreactor system for continuous culture of biological cells | 158 |
| 4 | WO2009023562A2 | Use of perfusion to enhance production of fed-batch cell culture in bioreactors | 107 |
| 5 | US20090280565A1 | High-rate perfusion bioreactor | 69 |
| 6 | US20160355776A1 | Bioreactor using acoustic standing waves | 58 |
| 7 | WO2006033935A2 | Perfusion bioreactor for culturing cells | 55 |
| 8 | US20150183821A1 | Integrated Continuous Manufacturing of Therapeutic Protein Drug Substances | 45 |
| 9 | US9416344B2 | Bioreactor using acoustic standing waves | 45 |
| 10 | US20170191022A1 | Bioreactor using acoustic standing waves | 44 |
Citation counts reward older, foundational filings within this searched set; treat them as a measure of influence on later filers, not as a signal of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Run it yourself
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Where to run it
For builders
MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →Insights
What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the trend, the technology split, and the citation table that matter more than any single ranking.
Filing momentum
29 → 10 → 3
2019 peak to 2022 midpoint to 2026 partial
The field is not in an active filing surge
Volume peaked in 2019 and has declined through the 2022 midpoint well before any publication-lag effect could explain it. A newcomer should read this as a maturing, consolidating claim space rather than one still being staked out.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Claim concentration
176 of 186
records classified under C12M
Bioreactor hardware is the crowded layer
Nearly every record in this corpus touches bioreactor or enzyme-apparatus claims, meaning new hardware configurations face the densest prior art. The genetic-engineering and separation layers are claimed by roughly a third to half as many records.
IPC composition
Citation age
271 citations
on the top-cited record, filed pre-2010
Influence sits with legacy disposable-bioreactor patents
The most-cited records in the corpus are disposable perfusion bioreactor patents from the early 2000s. Recent filings, including the 2025-granted Amgen bispecific-antibody process, have not yet accumulated comparable citation weight — that is a function of corpus age, not of technical merit.
Most-cited records
Geographic spread
69 US filings
vs. 25 PCT and 23 EPO
US-centric with a modest international tier
United States filings lead by a wide margin, with Israel's receiving office also notable at 26. PCT and European filings form a secondary tier, and India and Australia trail further back — useful context for where enforcement risk actually concentrates.
Receiving offices
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to continuous bioprocessing landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Assignee activity and where momentum has stalled
Recent-year filing counts for named assignees are low across the board, and several show zero or negative year-over-year momentum — a sign that the leading filers in this space have largely completed their core claim positions rather than continuing to expand them.
Momentum leaders
1 filing
in the latest year, shared by two assignees
Even the active filers are filing sparingly
Genzyme and Lonza each show just one filing in the latest year — the highest recent-year counts in the named-assignee momentum data. No assignee in this set is filing at volume currently.
Recent-year momentum
Momentum decline
-100% YoY
Amgen, latest year vs. prior
Amgen's filing pace has dropped to zero
Despite holding the representative recent grant in this landscape (US12227571B2), Amgen's tracked filing momentum shows a full year-over-year decline to zero in the most recent period — consistent with a company that has banked its core continuous-manufacturing claims and moved to enforcement or licensing rather than continued filing.
Recent-year momentum
Collaboration signal
5 shared families
MIT + National University of Singapore, strongest co-assignee pair
Cross-institution filing is concentrated, not broad
Only 10 co-assignee pairs exist across the corpus. The strongest is an academic pairing between MIT and the National University of Singapore; the next-strongest pairs both involve Becton Dickinson with named individual inventors, suggesting most collaboration here is inventor-driven rather than joint-venture driven.
Co-assignee pairs
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Genzyme | 1 | — |
| Lonza | 1 | — |
| Regeneron Pharmaceuticals | 0 | — |
| Flodesign Sonics | 0 | — |
| Amgen | 0 | -100% |
| Wyeth | 0 | — |
| Corning | 0 | — |
| Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH | 0 | -100% |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this analysis
The landscape points to a field with settled core claims and a few specific gaps rather than open ground everywhere.
Check freedom-to-operate on control-layer claims
Perfusion-rate control and PAT sensor integration sit outside the densest hardware claims but overlap with recent grants like US12227571B2. Run a targeted clearance search before designing a control scheme.
Explore claim scope in EurekaWatch for continuation activity from top-cited holders
The most-cited patents are two decades old; their original assignees may still hold continuation or divisional filings that do not surface in a simple keyword search.
Trace patent families in EurekaReassess as 2025-2026 filings publish
The most recent two years understate true filing activity because of publication lag. Revisit the trend once the 2025 and 2026 cohorts are more fully published.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on continuous bioprocessing patents
The most-cited records in this corpus are disposable perfusion bioreactor patents dating to the early 2000s, including US6544788B2 and its related application US20030036192A1, both cited well over a hundred times within this dataset. These early filings established core disposable-bioreactor design concepts that later filers have built on. More recent high-profile activity, such as Amgen's 2025-granted continuous manufacturing process for bispecific antibodies, has not yet accumulated comparable citation counts simply because it is newer.
No — filing peaked at 29 records in 2019 and had fallen to 10 by the 2022 midpoint, with the trend continuing downward into the most recent, still-publishing years. This is a genuine multi-year decline, not just an artefact of the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, since the drop is visible well before the years affected by that lag. Readers should treat this as a maturing claim space rather than one experiencing an active filing surge.
Bioreactor and enzyme-apparatus claims under IPC class C12M appear in 176 of the 186 records in this corpus, making that the densest layer by a wide margin. Genetic engineering claims (C12N) and separation-process claims (B01D) form a distinct second tier at 73 and 51 records respectively. Anyone filing a new hardware configuration for perfusion or continuous culture should expect to navigate dense prior art in the C12M space specifically.
US12227571B2, granted to Amgen in February 2025, claims a continuous upstream manufacturing process for bispecific antibody products that uses a two-stage perfusion rate: an initial rate to reach a target viable cell density, then a second, controlled rate that keeps antibody concentration below a set threshold before downstream processing. This specific two-stage perfusion-rate control sequence, tied to bispecific antibody products, is what the claims are likely to cover most tightly. A process using a single fixed perfusion rate, a different trigger than viable cell density, or a monospecific antibody product would sit further from this claim's likely scope, though a formal claim chart is needed to confirm design-around viability.
The United States leads as a receiving office with 69 filings, well ahead of any other single jurisdiction in this dataset. Israel follows at 26, with PCT international applications at 25 and European Patent Office filings at 23 forming a secondary international tier. Australia and India trail further behind at 12 and 9 respectively, suggesting enforcement and competitive risk in this field concentrates most heavily in the US market.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Research Continuous Bioprocessing Landscape in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole continuous bioprocessing landscape corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.