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Industry Round Table @ BioMarine2014

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Date: 30-31 October 2014

Venue: Cascais, Portugal

The MaCuMBA (Marine Microorganisms: Cultivation Methods for Improving their Biotechnological Applications) project led a round-table session at the fifth International BioMarine Business Convention in Cascais, Portugal on 30 October 2014.

BioMarine 2014 is an international conference where CEOs and executives from all areas of the marine sector have the opportunity to meet stakeholders in the marine bioresources sectors and professionals in the marine industry. This is a platform for research and industry alike to diversify their cross-sectoral knowledge, strengthen their existing partnerships and build new opportunities. This event was therefore an excellent opportunity for MaCuMBA to build new relationships and promote and transfer the innovative outcomes of the project to key stakeholders.

Professor Lucas Stal (MaCuMBA project coordinator) and Marieke Reuver (MaCuMBA Work Package 9 Leader, AquaTT) coordinated the round table session. During the round table, target outputs of the MaCuMBA project that have potential industrial relevance were presented and practical industrial development of these outputs was discussed with participants.

Pierre Erwes, Executive Chairman of BioMarine said ‘MaCuMBA is an example of an EU project which could really make a difference. The concept is appealing and attractive enough for SMEs and corporations to jump in. BioMarine was proud to present MaCuMBA in Cascais last October and we realise how important it was to bridge our investment and industry sector with research’.

Bruno Ferreira is the CEO of Biotrend, a company focused on the development, optimisation, de-risking and scale-up of bioprocesses for industrial biotechnology applications. He attended the MaCuMBA round table event at BioMarine as he had a particular interest in discussing novel strategies for the identification of promising activities from new marine microbes and improving the “hit rate”

He believes that MaCuMBA can provide a significant contribution to the screening of microorganism activities and the assessment of their commercial potential (i.e. not only detect an activity but quantify whether the performance is higher than existing molecules or platforms).

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 /2007-2013) under grant agreement no 311975. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the European Union cannot be held responsible for any use which maybe made of the information contained therein.