Oct 14 2010
Glycos Biotechnologies, Inc. (GlycosBio), an emerging biochemical company pioneering metabolic engineering and microbiology innovations for the production of sustainable biochemicals, today announced it has become a member of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Engineering Research Center for Biorenewable Chemicals (CBiRC).
As an active member and advisor, GlycosBio will support the CBiRC’s research and educational efforts by participating on the Industrial Advisory Board and join other chemical, biotechnology, energy and agricultural leaders in the pursuit to harness the power of biotechnology and catalysis to deliver innovations that cost effectively convert renewable chemicals into chemical feedstocks.
“GlycosBio chose to join the CBiRC because the Engineering Research Center’s vision and goals are in direct alignment with why we founded GlycosBio, to find a better way to make biochemicals,” said Paul Campbell, Chief Science Officer for Glycos Biotechnologies. “By leveraging biotechnology processes, GlycosBio has created a microbial platform proven to produce higher value biochemicals and biofuels from lower value, underutilized feedstocks. By optimizing the biochemical production of chemicals and microbial strains the cost of chemical production can be dramatically reduced while at the same time the diversity of chemicals can be greatly enhanced. We believe that by supporting the CBiRC’s efforts, we can reach sustainability within the chemical industry and we are excited to be part of this organization.”
Launched in 2008, the CBiRC bases its engineering platform on three interconnected segments including enzyme and microbial engineering, chemical catalysis and catalysis engineering, and testbeds and life cycle analysis. The CBiRC’s biocatalysis efforts are focused on the fatty acid or polyketide biosynthesis pathways with a goal of enhancing microbial production through targeted engineering. According to the CBiRC, combining biocatalysis with chemical catalysis opens the door to developing an array of feedstock chemicals that will form the basis for founding a biorenwable chemicals industry.
The CBiRC is based at Iowa State University in partnership with Rice University, the University of California at Irvine, the University of Mexico, the University of Virginia, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Germany and the Technical University of Denmark will contribute additional expertise and international connections.