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Scotland leads the way in the UK for environmental and agricultural biotech start-ups and, as a biotech company, it’s important for us to be actively involved in this community. The Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC20) Annual Conference is perfect for this. Hosted in Glasgow every year, it provides the opportunity for global experts to come together, share knowledge, discuss challenges and new opportunities, and showcase products and services to nearly 500 bio-based delegates.
Ingenza has attended IBioIC every year since its beginnings and it has been a pleasure to be a part of these events, seeing the conference grow, and gaining extra opportunities to network with our clients, academics, funding bodies and other scientists. And so, on the 5th and 6th of February 2020, a team from Ingenza headed over to the sixth annual IBioIC conference, made up of Dr Ian Fotheringham, our Managing Director, Dr Alison Arnold, Head of Fermentation, Rita Cruz, Team Leader Molecular Biology, and Scientist, Annemette Kjeldsen.
Parallel sessions ran over the two days, packing in a huge amount of content that visitors were able to pick and choose from, depending on what was most relevant to them. We were delighted to give two presentations as part of the ‘Engineering Biology’ session chaired by Liz Fletcher, Manager of the UK Centre for Synthetic and Systems Biology at the University of Edinburgh. The focus of this session was to explore the development of bioprocesses, from bioinformatics and design of experiments, through strain construction and bioprocess development with the aid of advanced analytics, to scale-up and manufacturing. It was brilliant to hear about the state-of-the-art research and commercial development that is ongoing in Scotland, showcasing the leading role of local biotechs in this exciting area.
Rita’s presentation on ‘Engineering Biology For Industry’ was well received, giving insights into large scale applications, and our approach to delivering tailored solutions for projects in bioethanol production, consumer goods development and crop protection products. Alison discussed ‘Examples of Industrial Fermentation’, and demonstrated Ingenza’s capabilities in scaling up cell growth from shakeflasks to optimal fermentation processes up to 50,000 litres. At the same time, Annemette – who is currently undertaking a PhD sponsored by IBioIC in collaboration with the University of Glasgow and ourselves at Ingenza – was given the opportunity to present a poster on using iLOV fluorescent proteins for industrial biotech applications.
And, if that wasn’t enough to shout about, we also had a superb time at the conference dinner. Set in the unique location of Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket, it gave us a fantastic chance for informal networking, and we even took part in the pre-dinner activity of building our jobs out of Lego! We’re already looking forward to next year’s event but, in the meantime, if you want to learn more about the services we can offer you, then please contact us. Or why not see what else we’ve been getting up to by reading another one of our blogs.