Industrial Collaboration
Providing biological solutions for industrial problems
SYNBIOCHEM is housed in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB), a leading UK/EU industry-interfaced biotechnology institute and widely acknowledged beacon of interdisciplinary bioscience. Our SynBio research focus for Industrial Biotechnology (IB) and chemicals manufacture at Manchester has a major role to play in delivering the UK’s vision for the bio-based economy, especially in bio-based chemicals manufacture, bio-therapeutics and novel bio-materials.
IN-DEPTH CHEMICAL EXPERISE
Our D/B/T/L technology platforms are underpinned with in-depth chemical expertise/understanding and coupled to RRI. We can offer access to our computational design tools, novel parts (enzymes/regulatory tools), Build/Test platforms, methodologies and “know-how” and have interdisciplinary expertise to help address your industrial challenges.
Collaborative Research
Current industry collaborations range from UK Research Council funded Industrial Partnering Awards (IPA) and sLola projects, EU consortium awards, major direct industry funded programs and short proof of concept grants. Examples include:
- Microbial cell factories for the production of high value pharmaceuticals
- Development of industrial chemicals through synthetic biology and pathways engineering
- Biosynthesis of semi-synthetic antibiotics
- New methods for the rapid directed evolution of enzymes and synthetic microorganisms for the development of industrial biocatalysts
Benefits of working with us:
- Access to leading facilities and expertise
- Interdisciplinary portfolio of research and expertise to meet your company’s specific needs
- Innovation transfer from laboratory towards manufacturing processes.
- Direct licensing of technologies and processes
- Access to funding for academic research partnerships unavailable to commercial projects
SYNBIOCHEM Training for Industry
We have hosted a number of CASE and industry funded PhD students working on projects on the development of: next generation bio-fuels; high throughput screening and assembly platforms for SynBio; and business models and strategies for the commercialisation of disruptive technologies.
Work With SYNBIOCHEM
We are always interested in hearing from new potential partners. For further details of collaboration and partnership opportunities please contact: Dr Kirk Malone: Kirk.Malone@manchester.ac.uk T: +44(0)161 306 0245
SPIN OUT COMPANIES
Following the commercialisation success of the MIB which has formed 10 companies since 2006, SYNBIOCHEM spin outs include:
C3 BIOTECH and Manchester Bio-Factory
Click here for more information on SYNBIOCHEM Spin Outs.
Research Commercialisation
Translation of our research activities is a key mark of our success. Recent patents from SYNBIOCHEM investigators (often through working in partnership with industry) include:
- A single-step synthetic biology/fermentative production route to the cholesterol lowering drug pravastatin. This research resulted from a partnership between SYNBIOCHEM investigators and DSM (Publication: McLean et al, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 112, 2847, 2015) which will facilitate industrial-scale statin drug production.
- New route to biosynthetic menthols using synthetic biology. The partnership between GlaxoSmithKline and SYNBIOCHEM resulted in the international filing of a SYNBIOCHEM patent for menthol production (Publication: Toogood et al, ACS SynBio, 4, 1112, 2015).
- Two major papers were published back to back in Nature on novel enzymes involved in fuels/alkene production. This research was the result of a partnership between SYNBIOCHEM investigators and Shell and led to the patenting of one of the component enzymes for fuels production (Publications: Payne et al Nature 522, 497, 2015; White et al, Nature, 522, 502, 2015).
- New SynBio routes to gaseous biofuels (propane). Collaborative research with Imperial College provided a new route to renewable bio-propane which is subject to a new patent submission in the US, and forms the basis of a new spin out company C3 Bio-Technologies Ltd (inc. 2015), which is commercialising SynBio routes to bio-propane production (Publication: Menon et al, Biotech for Biofuels, 8, 61, 2015).