ConBioChem

Accelerate the introduction of continuous manufacturing of bio-based commodity chemicals manufacturing at productivities and scales commensurate with economic viability.

Overview

ConBioChem is a 5 year multidisciplinary translational project funded by UKRI that aims to accelerate the continuous bio-manufacturing of commodity chemicals by developing superior, highly productive and cost effective fermentation techniques.

Led by the University of Nottingham, working alongside the University of Cambridge, University College London, and several industrial partners (including Green Biologics, Lucite, CPI, Ingenza andChain Biotech), the project will utilise synthetic and systems biology, metabolic and chassis engineering and metabolomics to develop highly efficient cell factories to produce target molecules of commercial interest to our industrial members.

In parallel to the development of productive producer organisms, multiscale models and techno-economic analysis tools will be developed to reliably predict scale-up performance. The project will address the following problems:

Genetic instability of engineered production strains
Unproductive metabolic flux towards generation of excess biomass rather than the target product
Switching inefficient batch fermentation processes to continuous operation
High costs and poor productivities that restrict the use of biotechnology in the manufacture of high volume chemicals.

The ConBioChem consortium will facilitate dramatic advances in synthetic biology based chemicals manufacturing and will focus on developing a toolbox of platform technologies to rapidly increase the number and range of engineered microorganisms that can be used for the cost effective and sustainable manufacture of bulk chemicals.

Batch fermentation can be a large operating expense when making bulk chemicals with markets of >100s tonnes plus pa. To make these processes more cost effective at scale, the project will develop continuous fermentations to align productivity and manufacturing costs with targets set by industrial members.

ConBioChem consists of four workpackages:

Work Package 1: Synthetic Biology for stable, highly productive biocatalysts

Work Package 2: Multi-Scale Strain to Process Models

Work Package 3: Continuous Bioprocesses

Work Package 4: Project Management & dissemination

Drivers for Producing Bio-Based Chemicals and Materials

Create cost effective, bioproducts with superior performance
Alleviate supply issues with unstable supplies, increasing cost and scarcity of fossil fuel feedstocks
Reduce supply chain CO₂ emissions, in line with corporate social responsibility
Replace materials under threat from legalisation (e.g. REACH)