Five projects, five capabilities that came into the lab
European and national research projects run with universities, research centres and chemical companies. In each one BiCT had a precise job — an enzyme to produce, a strain to characterise, an immobilisation to optimise — and that job later became a service. Here you find what was done, with what result, and which service it maps to today.
BIO4.0AGRIFOOD
Turning agri-food by-products into high value-added bioactives for the agricultural, nutraceutical and animal health sectors. The distinguishing feature is a fully automated screening platform: it identifies and optimises biostimulants and functional ingredients faster, cutting development time and cost.
- Automated platform for the screening and optimisation of biomass biotransformation processes
- Identification and production of bioactives starting from waste biomass
- Development built on circular economy principles, to reduce waste and environmental impact
INCITE
Bringing biotechnology into agrochemical manufacturing with two chemo-enzymatic processes taken all the way to demonstration plant: the enzymatic production of an intermediate, which allows the chemicals involved to be reused, and the solvent-free synthesis of esters. BiCT worked on the enzyme at the heart of the project and on producing it at scale.
- Mutagenesis, production and purification of the enzyme at the heart of the project
- Optimisation of the enzymatic step for the stereoselective production of the intermediate from a racemic mixture, working on reaction time, enzyme/substrate ratio and transformation yield
- Strategy for recovering the acid of interest from the reaction mixture, to feed the racemisation step
- Basic engineering of the demonstration plant, defining and installing the subunit for biocatalyst production
Tascmar
From the breeding of mesophotic marine invertebrates to building collections of their symbiotic micro-organisms, then used to search for active biomolecules for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic and bio-remediation sectors. BiCT characterised the enzymes: twenty strains selected, active on reference POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants).
- Characterisation of enzymes for bio-remediation and pharmaceutical applications from the microbial collections
- Selection of twenty strains active on reference persistent organic pollutants
- Work on collections built from scratch, starting from unconventional organisms
BioOX
The development of several ODEs (Oxygen-Dependent Enzymes): hydroxylations with CYPs, the P450 monooxygenases, and oxidation of polysaccharides with alcohol oxidases, also tested in Coflore flow reactors. BiCT brought the expression in fungi as host cells and the immobilisation of the enzymes developed in the project.
- Expression of the enzymes of interest in fungi as host cells, with samples produced, supplied and assayed
- Immobilisation of the enzymes on carriers with specific functional groups, including several alcohol oxidases
- Support to the biocatalysis tests, run in flow reactors as well
KyroBio
Selection and optimisation of enzymes for the preparation of chiral compounds and their use in bioreactors, including continuous operation and electrodialysis. BiCT’s contribution was the immobilisation of stereospecific enzymes, with a high throughput screening system built to find the optimal conditions.
- High throughput screening system to define the optimal immobilisation conditions: enzyme type, carrier, buffer composition, enzyme/support ratio
- Activity expressed after immobilisation above 80%
- Immobilisation of stereospecific enzymes for the production of chiral compounds
