Finland’s publicy-funded R&D organisation, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has joined forces with Molecular Sciences Institute (MSI) in California to establish a new research centre, the VTT/MSI Center for Bioengineering.
The centre will focus on developing novel strategies for improving the production of bio-based chemicals and proteins at an industrial scale and on novel quantitative tools for the detection of toxins, chemicals and biomarkers of disease.
The mission of the research centre is to enable the quantitative prediction of the behaviour of biological systems. As a member organisation of the new institute VTT will provide knowhow on industrial biotechnology and technology requirements to complement basic research in molecular biology carried out at the institute. The aim of the centre is to have a positive effect on human health and contribute to the development of the bioeconomy.
“The new centre generates basic science which will strengthen VTT’s offering in the field of industrial biotechnology,” says Erkki KM Leppävuori, President & CEO of VTT. “Industrial biotechnology is of high quality at VTT and in Finland. This new opportunity for collaboration is an important bridge between Californian and European academic and industrial networks.”
As the largest applied research organisation in northern Europe, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland works in co-operation with domestic and foreign partners. In industrial biotechnology, the research at VTT focuses on sustainable chemistry and processing, covering the discovery and production of enzymes, the development of new microbial strains, the development of chemical reaction routes, the discovery of drug targets and biomarkers, and also analysis of the reaction mechanisms with advanced analytical methods, as well as development of process applications at the laboratory and pilot scale.
The Molecular Sciences Institute MSI was founded by Nobel prize winner Sydney Brenner as an independent, non-profit research institute, to work in the fields of systems biology and synthetic biology.
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