New Wave Biotech and iMEAN Announce First Cell-to-Product AI Optimisation Solution for Biomanufacturing
Strategic partnership delivers one of the first end-to-end modelling solutions connecting upstream modelling with downstream process optimisation, TEA, and LCA
Model backed by proven results including 8.6x yield improvements and 92% fewer experiments
New Wave Biotech and iMEAN have partnered to offer biomanufacturers a pioneering combined solution for end-to-end bioprocess optimisation, combining New Wave’s downstream process, TEA and LCA modelling capabilities with iMEAN’s strain design and upstream process modelling expertise.
The EU Biotech Act, US BIOSECURE Act and China's Five-Year Plan are all accelerating demand for sovereign biomanufacturing capacity. Meanwhile, Digital twins and AI-driven modelling are attracting major investment in biomanufacturing (Boehringer Ingelheim, Merckut). However, most initiatives focus on either upstream or downstream in isolation. This is because upstream and downstream development operate in silos in the bioprocessing industry.
Strain engineers optimise organisms without visibility into purification constraints, while process developers design downstream workflows without understanding the upstream choices driving their feed streams. The result is costly rework, unexpected bottlenecks at scale, and R&D timelines that routinely stretch to 3–10 years with failure rates above 75%. The gap between the two - where organism design decisions cascade into purification complexity, cost, and sustainability outcomes - is where many bioprocesses fail at scale.
The New Wave Biotech–iMEAN partnership directly addresses this problem by enabling biomanufacturers to accurately predict outcomes before committing to expensive failures. iMEAN brings advanced genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction and upstream bioprocess simulation, combining mechanistic modelling with machine learning approaches. New Wave Biotech contributes hybrid AI modelling, integrating mechanistic and machine learning approaches, for downstream process optimisation, alongside its proprietary TEA and LCA methodology built specifically for biotech processes. Connected, they enable customers to digitally screen, simulate, and optimise entire bioprocesses to understand how upstream decisions affect downstream viability before committing to expensive wet lab experiments.
What the Joint Proposition Delivers
Anticipate downstream consequences of upstream choices before committing
Optimise across the whole process, not just within each half
Integrate cost and sustainability analysis from day one.
Leadership Commentary
Zoe Yu Tung Law, CEO and Co-Founder, New Wave Biotech
“Bioprocessing has an expensive disconnect. Companies spend months optimising a strain, hand it to the downstream team, and then discover it's a nightmare to purify. By then, the most expensive decisions have already been made. We built New Wave Biotech to enable smarter downstream optimisation. Partnering with iMEAN means customers can now see their downstream options upfront, and optimise the full end-to-end process together.”
— Zoe Yu Tung Law, CEO and Co-Founder, New Wave Biotech
Rémi Peyraud, CEO, iMEAN
“Metabolic modelling tells you how to design a better organism and optimise the bioprocess, but it doesn’t tell you whether beyond this milestone that bioprocess leads to an economic process at scale. Finally, partnering with New Wave Biotech is a natural extension of our mission at iMEAN, to deliver high-quality, end-to-end services that accelerate and de-risk our customer’s R&D. Together, we enable companies to visualise the full picture from day one.”
— Rémi Peyraud, CEO, iMEAN
From Blind Spots to Breakthroughs
A typical scenario both companies encounter: a high-performing strain that looks promising upstream but creates complex impurity mixtures downstream, making purification impractical or uneconomic at scale. With an integrated upstream-downstream model, this gets flagged early — before months of lab work are wasted. Both companies have individually delivered validated commercial results — a meaningful distinction in a space where many AI-for-bioprocessing claims remain at proof-of-concept stage. The joint offering is available now for biomanufacturers across food ingredients, industrial biotechnology, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.