Skills domains

TWBThe expertise of TWB covers a broad scope of industrial biotechnology: synthetic biology, enzyme engineering, metabolic engineering, fermentation, separation and purification processes and state-of-the-art analytical techniques. Microorganisms (bacteria, yeasts, filamentous fungi) and enzymes are the main biological tools. Other tools are conceivable and projects implementing protozoa or micro-algae have already been conducted.

The main objective is to use and convert renewable carbon sources (biomass, by-products) into valuable products.

Application domains are chemistry in a broad sense (chemical products, aromas, colors, prebiotics, pharmaceutical compounds,…), materials (bioplastics, biopolymers,…), food industry and energy (biofuels).

TWB skills include:

At the national level

  • TWB own resources, with its technical platforms
  • Partnerships established with renowned academic laboratories: TWB is tightly articulated with the Toulouse Biotechnology Institute (TBI) at INSA Toulouse. In order to expand TWB range of skills, other partnerships are also developed: Genopole Université d’Evry, ESPCI Paris Tech, MICALIS Jouy-en-Josas, BBF Marseille…
  • Partnership with the Technology Resource Center CRITT Bio-Industries Midi-Pyrénées.

Depending on the needs, TWB also collaborates with complementary life science platforms such as the Genotoul Toulouse network.

At the international level

  • collaborations with the partners of technological infrastructures from IBISBA (Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Acceleration) programme.

TBI

Toulouse Biotechnology Institute (TBI) at the University of Toulouse, under the triple administrative stewardship of INSA/INRAE/CNRS, is internationally renowned for its level of expertise in the fields of biocatalysis, metabolic engineering, microbiological engineering and environmental processes.

acteur-crittCRT/CRITT Bio-industries

A technology transfer oriented platform, CRITT Bio-Industries is specialized in pre-industrial scale bioprocesses. CRITT Bio-Industries owns a dedicated technology platform including biomass pre-treatment, fermentation, bio-separation and purification units.

IBISBA

IBISBA (Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Accelerator) is a European distributed research infrastructure dedicated to industrial biotechnology.
It aims to accelerate industrial biotechnology projects in order to provide researchers from universities and industry with integrated services for all stages of bioprocess development projects. The aim is to develop end-to-end project development and support services at European level, and to link innovation projects at an early stage with industry R&D and business needs. IBISBA brings together 23 universities and RTOs (Research and Technology Organisations) from 10 EU Member States (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden) and the UK.

In 2019, IBISBA was selected by the European Commission as part of the European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures (RI) for its strategic potential and impact on strengthening research in Europe. As a result, the infrastructure has been awarded the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) label. The European Commission has allocated €4 million over 4 years (2020-2023) to the “PREP-IBISBA” project, which follows on from the IBISBA 1.0 project. Its aim was to create and set up a distributed European IR to develop and support industrial biotechnology and synthetic biology. TWB’s missions consisted in designing and defining an innovative business model based on a continuum of services provided by distributed facilities and a 5-year business plan. TWB also took part in discussions on the legal entity to be created and the management of the industrial property resulting from the projects carried out within IBISBA.

Following the successful Preparatory Phase, the IBISBA-DIALS project aims to create and launch IBISBA as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).