With the help of a “Groeivoucher” from “Kansen voor West II”, BPF and BioMosae have fermentation productivity by a factor 20 and accelerated the learning curve towards the valuation of BioMosae’s invention.
BioMosae is a Dutch start-up that has developed an eco-friendly biopesticide based upon their BM-1 strain.
Bioprocess Pilot Facility (BPF) is a public pilot plant organisation active in microbial production, downstream processing and biomass valorisation in a food and non-food environment.
The hands-on know-how of experienced BPF technologists and operators, who plan and execute the actual pilot experiments, are equally important to the equipment base of the pilot plant. The BPF and BioMosae have cooperated to use that experience in order to help BioMosae to develop their production platform.
Scale-up is not just a matter of transferring the process into a bigger fermenter. Understanding of the non-linear transport phenomena, balancing cell growth and product formation, as well as the use of industrial relevant media are all crucial.
Based on BPF’s scale-up know-how and on a review of relevant prior art in literature, a down-scaled lab protocol was proposed using industrially relevant media. This protocol was verified at lab scale and resulted in a 20-to-50-fold increase in the production titre of the main active ingredient. Field trials are underway to verify this beneficial effect in application.
BPF Technologist Marko Kuijper is proud of the result:
“By nature of the service BPF provides, we are exposed to a multitude of microbial scale-up experiences over the years. Using this effectively, we can help saving technology start-ups time and money by providing a significant acceleration of the learning curve.”
BioMosae Guuske Busscher, Chief technology Officer
“The expertise and experience of BPF technologists have proven to be very valuable for us for two reasons. We succeeded in proving scalability of our process technology to a next production level, while at the same time the activity of our product has been substantially improved. In the coming months, based on the outcome of the project we are planning extensive efficacy trials to show the market attractive application possibilities of our ingredient for biological crop protection”.
This work was possible through the “Kansen voor West” biobased industries voucher. Call BPF to check, whether you can apply for this voucher, or check the Kansen voor West II website: https://www.kansenvoorwest2.nl/nl/subsidie/openstelling-vouchers-biobased-industries
