- Address
3 rue Ariane
31520Ramonville Saint Agne
France
Description
Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB) is a pre-industrial demonstrator which facilitates the interface between companies and academics, offering R&D projects from laboratory research to pilot scale (biocatalysis, synthetic biology, process engineering), in the field of biomaterials, chemicals and biofuels. TWB is an administrative body supported by French National Institute of Agronomy (INRA) with an association agreement National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA Toulouse) and Scientific Research National Center (CNRS). The activities foster the creation and design of biological tools (enzymes, microorganisms, microbial consortia) for use in industrial processes. TWB offers collaborative public / private R&D projects and services. The projects are based on a continuum of expertise: from research and proof of concept to pre-industrial development and industrial technology transfer including business creation. The expertise covers a broad scope of industrial biotechnology: enzyme engineering, synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, fermentation, separation and purification processes and state-of-the-art analytical techniques. TWB expertise mainly lies on using microorganisms (bacteria, yeasts, filamentous fungi) and enzymes as main biological tools. Other tools are conceivable and projects implementing protozoa or micro-algae have already been conducted. TWB has an original international private/public consortium with 53 partners on 1 January 2017. TWB partners share socio-economic objectives linked to industrial biotechnology and they take advantage of synergies within the network.
Toulouse White Biotechnology
Toulouse White Biotechnology
Contact Person
Mrs Laurie Rey
Equipment
The Microbial strain engineering platform is equipped with two automated colony pickers and specific equipment dedicated to the high-throughput analysis and preparation of nucleic acids, proteins and microorganisms, e.g. capillary electrophoresis systems, spectrofluorometer, custom-made cloning and transformation stations, flow cytometer analyzer/sorter, high capacity transfer liquid systems. The Biotransformation and culture process platform has a whole range of instrumented bioreactors with capacities from 50 mL to 300 L (batch, fed-batch, continuous). These reactors are coupled to an adapted at-line or on-line analytical system characterizing liquid, solid and gas phases. TWB is equipped with a custom-made high-throughput culture station. It consists of a robotic device fully automated and equipped with 24 mini-bioreactors (50mL). The Analytical platform includes chromatographic separation devices (liquid, ion, gas and size exclusion) and conventional and new-generation detectors (UV, infrared, amperometry, conductometry, charged aerosol detection, mass spectrometry, multi-angle light scattering, etc.)..
Services
TWB delivers a broad scope of services based on its experience in industrial biotechnology: enzyme engineering, synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, fermentation, separation and purification processes and analytical techniques.
TWB offers research and development contracts to private companies from research to pilot scale (metabolic pathway design, strain optimization, process optimization and scale-up), in connection with researchers from the top public laboratories.
TWB develops standard and customized service offers: technical and support services on TWB technical platforms, access to equipment, hosting and training.
Technical and support services are (i) High-throughput colony picking, (ii) Plasmid and strain engineering, (iii) Single cell characterization and high throughput screening of microbial cells by cytometry, (iv) Rapid optimization of microbial and enzymatic bioprocess, (v) Scale-up of the microbial culture process, (vi) Amino acid quantitative assay, (vii) Determination of the average molar mass of polymers in solution, (viii) Ethics and Society.
R&D teams from industrial customers can be hosted temporarily by TWB. This offer is very well suited for start-up companies who have not yet fully implemented their resources. The hosted start-ups benefit from a structure with equipment at the cutting-edge of innovation and top-level experts who help them in developing their project in a very practical manner and provide them with concrete opportunities with manufacturers.
Activities
Vitamins Polymers, bioplastics High value food & feed additives Enzymes Amino acids Biobased chemicals Biofuels OtherOther activities
Fine chemicals, cosmetic ingredients