Project description
Innovative solutions for enzymes for consumer products
The increasing shift to eco-friendly production impacts the industry of consumer products. The EU-funded FuturEnzyme project will develop advanced innovative solutions to discover, design, optimise and formulate low-cost enzymes for economically viable products in the textile, detergent and cosmetics sectors. A textile containing Elasthane, a liquid detergent, and a hyaluronic acid-based cosmetic, will be targeted. The project will issue a high-tech enzyme development platform using big biodata mining of both public and internal databases and bio-resources, disruptive machine learning, activity-based bioprospecting, protein engineering, nano-biotechnology, upscale fermentation and downstream processing systems. FuturEnzyme will boost collaboration between academic and industry partners through clusters contributing to innovation capacity and economic development with reduced environmental impacts of the consumer products industry.
Objective
In FuturEnzyme, a multi-disciplinary and multi-actor consortium of 16 leading academic and industrial partners will develop technologies of the FUTURe for low-cost ENZYMEs for environment-friendly products. The consortium will develop the most advanced innovative solutions in a fast-track to market platform to discover, design, optimise and formulate enzymes. The high-tech enzyme development platform will use big biodata mining of both public and internal databases and bio-resources, and disruptive machine learning, activity-based bioprospecting, protein engineering, nano-biotechnology, upscale fermentation, and downstream processing systems. The enzymes developed will be used to develop economically viable products on 3 market segments, textiles, detergents, and cosmetics, which combine a higher level of functionality with greater sustainability during their production, use or end-of-life: they respond to consumer and industry requests for greener products. We will also bring to fruition the enormous potential of the developed enzymes for use as catalysts to faster yield greener, more valuable, and sustainable products in other market sectors. The strong collaboration of the academic and industry partners will be supported by clusters, thus making sure we take a holistic approach. Analysing technology, market, consumer, and socio-economic demands, and assessing safety, risk, and life-cycle analysis during the technology and product development in an iterative process, will ensure the results will be effective and relevant. They also contribute to the goals of ensuring innovation capacity and economic success, while reducing the environmental impacts of consumer products. The consortium will interact with a broad stakeholder network to ensure uptake of its developments and feedback insights towards policy-makers.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringtextiles
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteinsenzymes
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybioprocessing technologiesfermentation
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
28006 Madrid
Spain