Solano Community College

The biotechnology program at Solano Community College is famous for its curriculum in biomanufacturing. Graduates learn how to work in the biotechnology industry as production technicians. Production technicians operate and maintain the equipment used to manufacture protein pharmaceutical products. Students grow bacterial, yeast, and mammalian cells and purify the proteins that are produced by those cells. They learn how to follow good manufacturing practices (GMPs) by maintaining records that comply with quality assurance procedures and government regulations.

Solano Community College now offers a Bachelor's degree in Biomanufacturing!  There are two Biomanufacturing Baccalaureate program options to choose from: a full-time program with a two-year completion date, and a part-time program with a three to four-year completion date.

Biomanufacturing means growing living cells (bacterial, yeast, and animal cells) in large tanks and inducing them to produce a protein that can be used in the making of many different products, such as medicines, stem cells, biofuels, biomaterials, and biologically created chemicals. That protein must then be separated from other cellular components, and purified using techniques that exploit its properties to isolate it from other cellular proteins. Technicians then use analytical techniques to prove the purity of the isolated proteins.

The college’s Vacaville center is located across the street from Genentech’s Vacaville manufacturing plant (the largest multi-use cell culture manufacturing facility in the world) and the college shares a 20 year relationship with that company.  Genentech, and later Amgen, helped Solano College develop one of the first biotechnology programs that stressed the skills and knowledge required for graduates to enter the manufacturing sector of the biotechnology industry. In 2017 the college initiated a Bachelor's of Science in Biomanufacturing degree that stresses engineering, quality, and regulatory considerations and the first cohort will graduate in May 2019. Also in 2017, Solano College opened a four-suite biomanufacturing training facility in its $34 million Biotechnology/Science building . The department received a National Science Foundation grant to teach faculty single-use bioreactor technology and is part of the stem cell education grant based at Madison Community College. Located near Travis Air Force Base, the college is completing a new Veterans center and Science building as a part of a second new science building on the Fairfield campus.  Solano County contains the Vallejo-Fairfield Statistical Metropolitan Area, the most diverse in the United States.  

Additional courses:

BIOT 3: Fermentation:  Beer and Brewing
BIOT 57: Synthetic Biology and Algae Biotechnology
BIOT 60: Mammalian Cell Culture
BIOT 61:  Stem cell biology