Abolis, a young genopolitan company, has won phase 2 of the 2030 Global Innovation Contest with the Cell Factory project. This prize rewards the second phase of its development: the completion of its platform for the design of micro-organisms capable of producing, by fermentation, molecules of interest for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and food industries. Abolis combines computer, robotic, analytical, genetic and fermentation technologies to design chemical production processes that are more environmentally friendly..
Installed at Genopole® since its creation in 2014 and employing 20 people, Abolis Biotechnologies develops custom microorganisms capable of producing chemical molecules of industrial interest. The young company is already marketing its know-how in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and agri-food industries.
The 2030 Global Innovation Contest phase 2 rewards its Cell Factory project which aims at the realization of an automated platform piloting the whole design process of microorganisms. For Cyrille Pauthenier, president of Abolis, "This project covers the completion of the development, chaining and intensive validation of all elements of our microorganism design, construction and characterization platform. To the initial technologies, we are adding analytical and fermentation technologies. The validation stage will consist of the design of microorganisms producing molecules intended for the agri-food industry. The main objective of Cell Factory is to allow the change of scale, i.e. to make it possible to work in parallel on several customer projects with more efficient tools. In this way, we hope to make our contribution to the transformation of the chemical industry".
Indeed, new industrial fermentation processes, developed thanks to biotechnologies, lead to the production of chemical compounds not from oil but from sugar and water. They also make it possible to produce molecules whose industrialisation was not previously feasible with traditional chemical processes.
These bioprocesses therefore represent possible alternatives to chemical processes that are often polluting, to supply problems but also sometimes to the use of molecules that have harmful effects on the environment and health. By enabling the increasingly rapid design of microorganisms that produce molecules of industrial interest, the synergy between synthetic biology, computer and robotic technologies achieved by Abolis should provide the company with a tool that matches its ambition: "If we want to change industrial practices towards a more environmentally friendly approach, we must also be able to offer alternative processes to the chemical industry at a faster pace than we have today. says Cyrille Pauthenier.
