The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (CFB) at the Technical University of Denmark aims at developing new knowledge and technologies to help facilitate the transformation from the existing oil-based chemical industry to a more sustainable bio-based society, in which chemicals are produced biologically. CFB focuses on conducting research in developing the next generation of production organisms -the socalled cell factories, for the sustainable and economically feasible bioproduction of chemical compounds and for improved production of therapeutic proteins. The center does this by using advanced metabolic engineering techniques and taking advantage of genome-scale science. The research at CFB is currently focused on three different model organisms: bakers yeast, E. coli for the production of valuable chemicals and CHO-cell lines for the production of therapeutic proteins.
The overall goals of the CFB are:
- to determine the spectrum of chemistry that can be produced biologically, and
- to accelerate the engineering, design and construction of cell factories for the bioproduction of chemical compounds and therapeutic proteins.
CFB is a DTU research center and is on par with an traditional academic university department, but without an educational mission. Beside its basic research in bioengineering CFB is also aiming at innovation by developing new technologies and transferring knowledge to industry for the benefit of society. The CFB is therefore organized to operate at the interphase of basic and translational research.