EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
HARNESSING UK STRENGTHS IN BIOMANUFACTURING The Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub (Future BRH) aims to drive efficient, sustainable and innovative bio-based manufacturing in four key sectors – Pharmaceuticals; Value-added Chemicals; Engineering Materials; Advanced Biofuels. By developing new underpinning technologies based on industrial biotechnology (IB) the Future BRH is accelerating the delivery of economically attractive, robust and scalable biomanufacturing processes to meet societal and commercial demand through industrial partnerships and co-created research programmes. In Year 1 a key focus has been on recruitment and set-up of the Hub based at The University of Manchester (UoM) and developing communication and early research programmes with Spokes at Imperial College London, University College London, University of Nottingham, the UK Catalysis Hub, IBioIC and CPI. Connecting Hub and Spoke strengths in interdisciplinary IB discovery science with industry will stimulate innovative and sustainable biomanufacturing capabilities, positioning the UK at the vanguard of economic Clean Growth. The Future BRH has recruited an expert team of Research Fellows, laboratories have been established and a broad portfolio of early win research projects are tackling the core Grand Challenges of accelerated biocatalyst engineering for biomanufacturing and realising the value of industrial biotechnology at scale. Alongside these Grand Challenges are a number of Platform Research programmes to develop high throughput biocatalyst engineering (Platform 1) and analytical screening (Platform 2), continuous flow biocatalysis (Platform 3), industrial host strain engineering (Platform 4) and integrated, continuous processes for large scale chemicals manufacture (Platform 5). As a biomanufacturing accelerator, Future BRH is coordinating UK academic, HVM catapult, and industrial capabilities to enable the complete biomanufacturing innovation pipeline to deliver economic, robust and scalable bioprocesses to meet societal and commercial demand.
FUTURE BIOMANUFACTURING RESEARCH HUB | futurebrh.com | Annual Report 2020
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