Accelerating Industrial Bioprocess Development
Many scientists agree that the 21st century will be seen as the century of biotechnology. This technology has already brought us numerous industrial products in recent decades, ranging from medications to polymers. Micro-organisms such as bacteria play a key role in biotechnology in many production processes requiring the use of microbial fermentation technology.
However, the technological and economic success of biotechnology depends increasingly on improving production efficiency, in particular, on faster development and reduced process development costs.
Microbial fermentation—the mixture of science, technology and art that is needed to convert discoveries into bioprocesses and bio-products—is critical to many industrial biotech processes. Solid attention has to be paid to microbial fermentation process development in order to meet stringent requirements that affect quantity and quality of the product, as well as reliability of the production process used.
Dr. Denis Groleau, Canada Research Chair in Micro-organisms and Industrial Processes, is examining how microbial fermentation process development can be accelerated through biological and analytical approaches. He aims to design and better control microbial fermentation processes that will be used in biopharmaceutical biotechnology and in other biotechnology sectors, to increase the efficiency and profitability of this kind of production. This will reduce development costs and increase the probability of creating new industrial applications for discoveries made in basic research.
Groleau is focusing not only on high volume products with low value but also on low volume products with high value, which are difficult to produce at large scales but account for much of the potential future of the pharmaceutical industry.
Groleau’s research will reduce costs associated with process and product development and increase the success rate of Canadian biotech firms.