Objective
To demonstrate that ecologically friendly bacterial polyesters made from renewable resources are as reliable as the well proven polystyrene matrices in analytical test kits a producer of bacterial polyesters, a producer of disposable plastics and three different testing laboratories have joined to produce test carriers and kits and to prove on a large scale the usefulness, reliability, and reproducibility of the fermentation products in comparison to the hitherto used polystyrene. The project aims to convince laboratory personnel that disposable plastics made of environmentally friendly materials, especially plastics used for ELISA-tests, are as safe as conventional plastics and that no compromise in quality, sensitivity, or reproducibility is to be feared.
The project is based on laboratory developments showing that certain formulations of PHB (polyhydroxybutyric acid) and PLA (polylactic acid) bind antigens and antibodies equally well as polystyrene. Neither the laboratory developments nor the fermentation/compounding/moulding procedures need further basic research. However in order to convince testing labs that the new materials are as reliable as the hitherto used polystyrene it will be necessary to demonstrate that lot to lot quality is assured and that testing has been done on a large scale with multiple antigens and antibodies.
To this goal it is planned 1) to fine-tune the current industrial fermentation and extraction procedures used for the production of injection moulding grades to get materials with constant protein affinities, 2) to optimise blending/compounding of the fermented and extracted materials to the needs of the specific application, 3) to adapt present injection moulding procedures to the new applications, and 4) to thoroughly test the materials in different labs with multiple antigens and antibodies to demonstrate reproducibility, ease of use and economics of the proposed goal.
At the end of the project optimal fermentation and processing conditions necessary for mass production with constant qualities will have been established and enough references will have been generated to convince testing labs of the new, ecologically sensitive materials. If successful the project opens a new market for biotech products for European companies and unlocks new export chances especially to the States and Japan.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterialsbioplasticspolylactic acid
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomics
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybioprocessing technologiesfermentation
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
1950 LUXEMBOURG
Luxembourg