IBISBA / IBISBA INRAE

Listed on the national roadmap since 2016, the IBISBA-Fr research infrastructure (Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Acceleration), coordinated by INRAE in partnership with INSA and CEA, structures the French industrial biotechnology community and ensures its involvement in the IBISBA.eu project, a European distributed research infrastructure listed on the ESFRI roadmap since 2018, also coordinated by INRAE and bringing together 14 partners from 9 European countries.

The mission of IBISBA is to contribute to the development of industrial biotechnology as an essential component of the circular bioeconomy. It aims to develop innovative solutions for the bioproduction of products and services based on the valorization of bioresources: the design and development of biological catalysts (enzymes and microorganisms) and corresponding bioproduction processes to offer innovative and sustainable solutions to major industrial and societal challenges related to the bioeconomy.

IBISBA’s activities focus on biological engineering and services, following the CATI cycle (Design, Build, Test, Integrate – DBTL in English). IBISBA's services are applied in a wide range of sectors, including industrial bioenergy, chemicals, materials, agri-food, wellness, pharmaceuticals, and the environment.

Its goal is to identify, develop, and integrate technologies that leverage living systems to:

• Develop novel manufacturing processes
• Design products with performance levels unattainable through traditional production methods
• Anticipate the implementation of strict environmental regulations

IBISBA aims to provide services to overcome both biological and technological bottlenecks encountered in these developments, resulting in the acceleration of scientific and technological knowledge valorization into industrial products and processes while facilitating the interface between public and industrial research.

To achieve this, IBISBA relies on a network of academic partners who are experts in their respective research fields, its cutting-edge technological platforms, and its industrial partners, allowing the development of innovative and sustainable production pathways up to the pre-industrial stage.

At INRAE, IBISBA-INRAE relies on the TWB pre-industrial demonstrator, which was funded by the "Investissements d'Avenir" program, and on the combinatorial engineering and high-throughput screening platform (ICEO), a component of the Integrated Screening Platform of Toulouse (PICT).