This summer, the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) announced a partnership to provide the tools and expertise Canadian firms need to translate research and development from the lab to the marketplace.
The two organizations will leverage existing capabilities and infrastructure and will co-manage a fermentation facility located at Innovation Place in Saskatoon. The partnership will enable each organization to meet the increasing demand for fermentation services, to expand current service offerings and decrease client wait times while accelerating the commercialization of products. It will also allow both parties to take further advantage of their respective facilities to explore new business areas with a broader national scope.
The partnership will work with industry in the development of new bioproducts for niche markets and develop bio-manufacturing processes and products for industries beyond agriculture and health to also include the energy, mining and minerals sectors.
SRC has been one of Canada’s premier contract biomanufacturing service providers since the 1990s and is well positioned through this partnership to build critical mass to advance innovation in biomanufacturing including the areas of biomass development, biocatalyst and bioprocessing, as well as fermentation and microbial synthesis. SRC’s Biosafety Level 2 fermentation facility is well-equipped for process development, scale-up, optimization and manufacturing of microbial technologies, upstream production, downstream processing and product analysis and it is further supported by leading-edge genomics infrastructure.
SRC President and CEO Laurier Schramm says the partnership will allow SRC to take further advantage of our facilities and expertise to explore new business areas with a broader national scope by leveraging the capabilities that NRC can provide. “It will also allow SRC to expand our current service offerings.”
Roman Szumski, VP, Life Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, says this partnership will greatly benefit the goals of NRC’s Bio-based Specialty Chemicals program where 50% of the focus revolves around fermentation and microbial synthesis. “As Canada’s premier research and technology organization, NRC is an essential partner to drive innovation across Canada, by translating research and technology into jobs, growth, and long-term prosperity for Canadians.”
Photos courtesy of SRC