The Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) and Fraunhofer Center for Chemical- Biotechnological Processes (CBP) are part of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, a private non-profit organisation focusing on applied research with 2,1 bio € annual turnover. Fraunhofer IGB develops and optimizes processes and products for the business areas of medicine, pharmaceutics, chemistry, the environment and energy. Core competences among others are bioprocess engineering and molecular biotechnology. Fraunhofer IGB is experienced in the in silico screening of genomic databases, the development and screening of metagenomic libraries from enrichment cultures, and the optimization of heterologous expression of recombinant enzymes in pro- and eukaryotic production strains including the development of appropriate analytical assays. Further, Fraunhofer IGB together with Fraunhofer CBP develops optimized fermentation processes starting with the metabolic engineering of microbial strains over isolation, separation and purification of the products. Fraunhofer CBP stands for scalable new methods, especially with a view to cost efficiency, which are required to be closely interlinked with existing production structures in industry. To transfer new technologies from the laboratory or pilot plant to industrially relevant orders of magnitude. Fraunhofer CBP closes the gap between the pilot plant and industrial implementation. By making infrastructure and plants/miniplants available, the Fraunhofer CBP makes it possible for cooperation partners from research and industry to develop and scale processes for utilizing renewable raw materials up to an industrial scale.

Fraunhofer IGB is experienced in research in the field of industrial, white biotechnology which is performed in an interdisciplinary manner. The activities of the Industrial Biotechnology Group headed by Dr. Susanne Zibek focus on establishing, optimizing and upscaling biotransformation processes in which raw materials are transformed into usable products either with the aid of microorganisms or enzymes. Fraunhofer IGB and CBP combine the development of transformation processes on a laboratory scale and the optimization of the biocatalysts themselves with the transfer of the processes to larger scales. In addition, IGB can increase the scale up to the pilot-scale either at our customers' and project partners' facilities or at the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP.

Fraunhofer CBP is experienced in broadly based bioprocess engineering expertise in the field of scale-up and process intensification. The processes developed on the laboratory scale in terms of their transferability to an industrially relevant scale are evaluated in the preliminary stages and are optimized repetitively during transfer and scale-up. This includes, for example, the adjustment of process control strategies (batch, fed-batch, continuous) and integrated product purification to reduce the number of process steps or the reutilisation of the biocatalysts (e.g. by immobilization on carrier materials).


Key Persons Involved