EU grants € 19.9 million to three large-scale biotech projects

Biotechnology

The European Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE) programme has granted € 19.9 million to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at DTU for three research projects.

The ‘Promys project’ will develop, validate and implement a novel synthetic biology platform technology termed ligand responsive regulation and selection systems. Ligand responsive regulation and selection systems are biological devices that integrate biological sensing modules within larger regulatory networks to control cellular programmes.

The project grant is € 6.8 million and includes seven partners of which three are industrial. The estimated duration is four years.

The ‘BacHBerry project’ aims to develop a portfolio of sustainable methodologies to mine the potential of the untapped biodiversity of the bioactive phenolic compounds in an extensive collection of berry species.

The project grant is € 7.3 million and includes seven partners of which five are industrial. The estimated duration is three years.

The ‘BioREFINE-2G’ project wants to develop commercially attractive processes for efficient conversion of pentose-rich side-streams from biorefineries into dicarboxylic acids, which can be used as precursors for bio-based polymers including biodegradable polymers.

The project grant is € 4.8 million and includes eight partners of which five are industrial. The estimated duration is four years.

The EU funding for the three projects will allow DTU to take an important step towards the goal of developing new technologies to help facilitate the transformation from the existing oil-based chemical industry to a more sustainable bio-based society, in which chemicals are produced biologically.