Toulouse White Biotechnology, a five years retrospective of the 1st pre-industrial demonstrator in industrial Biotechnology.

Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB) is a thematic pré-industrial demonstrator aimed to facilitate private/academic research partnership. Focused on industrial biology development, it offers scientific and technical support and provides to its partners a rich and adjusted contractual frame to operate innovative research programs.

TWB is born in 2012 and is actually governed by a public/private consortium of 53 partners (including CNRS, INRA research institutes and industrial/financial partners). TWB hosts and operates three technological acceleration platforms aimed to reduce cost and time necessary to develop and consolidate new bio-processes (Strain screening and engineering, culture systems scale and scale-up). Since 2012.TWB operated about 50 research projects between academic team and industrial biotech SMEs, Start-Up or large companies.

In order to initiate innovative projects, TWB handles a call to fund precompetitive projects. This call allows to complete the maturation of innovative idea with industrial impact over a 1 to 2 years period. In the past 5 years, TWB granted 23 precompetitive research programs and liberated about 20 new proof of concept (POC). Among these POC, 7 are patented by public research institutes with a prioritised access for industrial partners of the consortium.

TWB opened in October 1st its 7th precompetitive call. This call is open to academic research teams belonging to units operated by CNRS, INRA or INSAT public institutes.