Industrial Biotechnology is a Key Enabling Technology under Horizon 2020, expected to boost technological innovation and industrial leadership in the EU. It can improve chemical processes in compliance with the principles of Green Chemistry and effectively address social, environmental and economic challenges of our time. Assembling simple fragments to build larger, more complex products is an essential technology at the heart of industrial organic synthesis. With traditional chemical methods, C-C bond formation or "carboligation", is difficult to control selectively, and often involves the use of toxic solvents and hazardous reagents; whereas a biotechnology approach, using enzymes from a variety of microbial sources and with appropriate “tailoring” when needed, can catalyze carboligation reactions with excellent precision under very mild conditions. I also has the potential to be more cost-effective, often producing high yields of the desired product with fewer steps and less by-product formation.
For unleashing the vast, hidden treasury of enzymatic carboligation, the CC-TOP network has identified and is currently addressing a number of critical needs, technology gaps, practical challenges and synthetic opportunities with a huge potential for innovation. CC-TOP is a European research project involving 9 academic, 3 industrial beneficiaries, and 8 external partners, aiming to harness the power of biocatalysts to make industrial organic synthesis more sustainable; We aim to bridge the knowledge gap in CC-bond forming enzymes starting from enzyme discovery up to industrial process implementation. For the purpose, we combine basic research and applied engineering to optimise biocatalysts that can make the difference in the market, by producing much in demand chiral chemicals and pharmaceutical precursors. The main goal of the CC-TOP ETN is to deliver tailored training and education to a group of 15 top Early-career Stage Researchers on cutting-edge carboligation enzyme technology and its translation into efficient Industrial Biotechnology applications. The overall approach of the CC-TOP research aims to contribute to a more sustainable future, thereby supporting the European Green Deal.
