Carbios has accelerated its enzyme screening process with a microfluidic technology developed in partnership with the Paul Pascal Research Centre (a joint research unit of the CNRS and the University of Bordeaux, which specializes in microfluidics). This cutting-edge technology enables the screening of millions of enzymes in just one day, speeding up the process to optimize enzymes breaking down PET. This competitive advantage enables Carbios to reduce the time between the R&D phase and the production of its proprietary enzymes, and therefore to develop concrete solutions to plastic pollution even faster.
“Since having applied microfluidics to our screening process more than a year ago, we have analyzed millions of enzymes, which would have taken years beforehand,” explains Prof. Alain Marty, Chief Scientific Officer at Carbios. “This technology gives access to a large variety of enzymes in record time. Microfluidics has enabled us to optimize the enzyme presented in 2020 in the journal Nature, and it is this optimized enzyme that will be used in our first industrial reference unit in 2025.”
“Microfluidics is already widely used in medical diagnostics to analyze biological samples. When Carbios approached us to use it for new industrial applications, this was a first,” said Jean-Christophe Baret, Professor at the University of Bordeaux and team leader at the Paul Pascal Research Center hosted by the CNRS. “We are very pleased to develop new methods using the power of microfluidics for an environmental cause such as the reduction of plastic pollution.”
