“Biotechnology a Driver for Clean & Healthy Circular Economies – The Most Innovative EU Biotech-Projects”

SUSBIND – Nomination to be one of the most innovative biotech-projects in the EU by the KETBIO project platform!

“KETBIO’s  experts and its Commercial Committee have short-listed the top 10 biotechnology projects out of more than 300 EU-funded research projects. Please cast your vote online to decide on the most impactful and most promising EU-funded research in key enabling biotechnologies – from alternative proteins, bio-based compounds and food packs to microbial plastic recycling, enzymatic tools and industrial biotechnology.”

 

The list of projects comprises:

• Application of cold plasma treatment for antimicrobial contact lenses
• A new generation of microbial electrochemical wetland for effective decentralized wastewater treatment
• Exploiting native endowments by re-factoring, re-programming and implementing novel control loops in Pseudomonas putida for bespoke biocatalysis
• Fully bio-based and bio-degradable ready meal packaging
• From plastic waste to plastic value using Pseudomonas putida synthetic biology
• Re-think all plastic packaging – Wood-based fructose for production of plastic bottles and all plastic packaging
• Sustainable jet fuel from flexible waste biomass
• Industrial applications of marine enzymes: Innovative screening and expression platforms to discover and use the functional protein diversity from the sea
• Innovative and scalable biotechnology using microbial fuel cell and anaerobic digestion for the treatment of micro-scale industrial and agriculture effluents to recover energy from waste

Many thanks again for your vote & help to make an impact for EU’s key enabling biotechnologies!

 

KETBIO Online Booster Conference Participation

SUSBIND, nominated for the Top-10 Most Innovative Biotech Projects in the EU, has been invited to give a talk at the KETBIO “Biotech Innovation at the Heart of a Green and Healthy Recovery for Europe” Online Booster Conference, June 17th. Among several invited speakers from the European Commission & Innovation Council, industry, policy makers, investors and commercial experts, RTDS represented SUSBIND in the afternoon session, accompanied by two other finalist projects.

“Biotech paves the way towards a broad range of applications including new sustainable consumer products such as bio-plastics, bio-based paints and glues, detergents, fertilizers for agriculture and sustainable fuels and energy carriers”, said Juergen Tiedje (European Commission, Head of Unit Sustainable Industry Systems), elaborating on KETBIO’s project analysis as baseline for the commercialisation and innovation potential.

The KETBIO project prior to the release of the Green Deal, tackling today’s challenges with knowledge by gathering best ideas and sustainable technologies for the modernisation of industrial sectors to become more circular. Industrial biotechnology has received and is still receiving significant funding from the EU, as it is seen as a key enabling technology for many fields, however time-to-market is a lengthy process and a lot of research and start-ups are disappearing into the “valley of death”, observes Tiedje, emphasizing the role of funding and additional services to support innovative projects.

“Overall, economy is mainly linear, and only a very little part is circular, which is unsustainable in a long-term view. The solution is: bioeconomy – bio-based materials replace fossil-based resources with less emissions and waste. It is intrinsically more efficient than the linear economy”, added Pavel Misiga (European Commission, Head of the Circular Economy and Bio-based Systems Unit, Directorate “Healthy Planet”) and on the EU support to deployment of bio-based solutions and transition in the next periods: “It can be expected that there will be a growth of the bio-based economy as a consequence of the demand for bio-based solutions. A part of the support is provided by the Bio-Based Industry Joint Undertaking public-private partnership for example. The circular bio-based Europe programme under Horizon Europe with the InvestEU financial instrument provides €11 billion for research & innovation investments.”

In total, the InvestEU is expected to mobilise at least €650 billion in additional investment between 2021 and 2027, to support four main policy areas: sustainable infrastructure; research, innovation and digitisation; small and medium businesses; and social investment and skills.

 

KETBIO: “A novel cluster model to bring KEY ENABLING BIOTECHNOLOGY research closer to markets and society”

The KETBIO project hub has attracted 1200 users over the last three years, says coordinator Dr. Kathrin Rübberdt (DECHEMA Gesellschaft für chemische Technik und Biotechnologie E.V.). In fact, KETBIO is an EU project itself, receiving funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation Programme. Since October 2017, KETBIO supported Europe’s bioeconomy projects by providing an online platform for networking and knowledge exchange between research-industry-policy stakeholders, as well as organising conferences and webinars.

“This KETBIO project aims at establishing a novel cluster model of biotechnology research projects under HORIZON 2020 to enhance and demonstrate the impact and the outreach of EU funded key enabling biotechnology research. All impact of research is reflected in an appropriate up-take of research outputs through business and society at large as well as through integration into technological and societal systems, the here proposed novel clustering model will thus act as a pivot trajectory to achieve a maximum of these goals for the biotechnology: The proposed cluster will strive to further Research & Technical Development and innovation through networking and alliance forming and through capacity gains of cluster members. The envisaged clustering of projects and linkage to knowledge transfer activities will allow accelerated industrial exploitation of results through partnering and will maximise impact through exploiting synergies in knowledge transfer and communication. Supporting and coordination activities of KETBIO will lead to the set-up of an actively managed cluster-network of projects facilitating sharing of insights, mutual learning, working group exchange, partnering with industry, dissemination of results and exploring of exploitation pathways.” (CORDIS)

 

Last but not least, we are delighted to announce that SUSBIND is part of the KETBIO Flagship Booklet – A project showcase that is available online now!

 

Author: Dr. Stefan Weiss

Dissemination & Communication / RTDS Group

 

Further events with SUSBIND participation:

Stakeholderdialog Biobased Industry (Vienna, Austria)

BBI JU Stakeholder Forum 2019 (Brussels, Belgium)

European Summit of Industrial Biotechnology 2019 (Graz, Austria)