Scottish Enterprise and Interface have announced £250,000 funding for research and development collaborations to create new products, processes and services.

In August, Isomerase, a synthetic biology company who use microbes to make a range of products from therapeutics to enzymes, announced the launch of a powerful new tool designed to enhance the directed evolution of enzymes.

The UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Innovate UK have today announced £15m funding over the next five years for a National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC), with the remainder of the support coming from partners.

Interface has welcomed new members to its Strategic Board, from business and academic backgrounds, with a focus on supporting business-academic collaborations.

The James Hutton Institute has announced its role in co-leading a new £38m UK-wide centre which could soon see alternatives to animal proteins made from plants, fungi, algae and meat grown in labs.

Green Bioactives (GBL), a pioneering world-class company in the discovery, development and sustainable production of high value plant-based products, is delighted to announce that it has been awarded a £100,000 Scottish Enterprise SMART grant.

A new method to extract valuable bio-based chemicals from whisky distillery waste streams could transform manufacturing and be worth up to £90 million in global chemical manufacturing markets.

A refreshed industrial strategy, supporting economic growth and inward investment, is likely to be defined in the coming months, and given its role in the drive for sustainability, the bioeconomy should be a core focus. However, we cannot afford for new leaders to press pause on the progress made so far.

Waste textiles from sailing boats could be given a new lease of life as a result of a research project upcycling plastic fibres from sails into new chemicals such as vanillin – the compound used in cosmetics and food products for a vanilla flavour and smell.

IBioIC’s second annual Careers Day has seen over 100 attendees from industry and the student cohort meet at the University of Strathclyde’s Insight Institute.

IBioIC team members Annelie du Plessis, Neil Renault, and Albert Serrano Gomez had a particularly fruitful experience at SeAgriculture in June, with new members, new work, and new inspiration for delivering support to the seaweed industry.

The IBioIC team attracted a full house with people standing in the aisles to hear about the opportunities presented by engineering biology at this year’s Chem UK conference in Birmingham.

The biotech sector in Galicia has a cutting end biotechnology industry, exciting start ups and spin outs, and several world class research institutes. They have 160 biotechnology companies, which an annual turnover of more than €1.4 bn and, like Scotland, has ambition plans to fast track this by 2030. The biotech sector generates 5,600 direct jobs in Galicia and is growing at around 10% per year.

Aberdeen-based biotechnology company NCIMB has kicked-off a new research project to demonstrate novel enzyme technology with an exciting array of potential applications in the pharmaceutical, food & drink and environmental sectors. The work is being supported with a Bio-based Manufacturing in Scotland grant from Innovate UK.

Heriot Watt University and FlexBio have been awarded funds from Innovate UK as part of the RESILIENCE Centre of Excellence, an Innovate UK and Office for Life Sciences-funded programme which is intended to strengthen the UK’s Medicines Manufacturing skills pipeline, from outreach, awareness, and training in schools, to postgraduate and CPD study.

In early May, IBioIC co-hosted a UK pavilion at the world’s largest synthetic biology event in San Jose, California to showcase the best of UK’s engineering biology capability. 

The Inward Investment Catalyst Fund from Interface and the Scottish Government is aimed at attracting businesses out with Scotland, through developing partnerships with universities, research institutes, colleges and innovation centres.

Addressing heavy metal pollution is one of the most hotly contested areas of environmental research. Several individual treatments, namely, physical, chemical, and biological are being utilised to remove heavy metals from the environment – but they all face challenges in terms of sustainability, expensiveness and in-situ treatment failure. In this article, Leigh Cassidy discusses SEM’s latest approach to the issue.

Carbogenics has announced the opening of their new cutting-edge site, dedicated to the production of their flagship product, CreChar, set to revolutionise the anaerobic digestion (AD) market.

Researchers in Scotland are investigating the potential of converting sewage sludge into a mineral-rich material that could be used to treat water impacted by eutrophication and algal blooms – a phenomenon increasingly affecting lochs and rivers, associated with climate change.