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2013|14 Annual Report Fraunhofer IGB

30 FRAUNHOFER LIGHTHOUSE PROJECTS HIGHLIGHTS 2013 1 On the initiative of its president, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s established portfolio management process has been used to identify new lighthouse projects that will significantly lift the profile of the six major societal areas of health and nutrition, communication and information, mobility and transportation, en- ergy and raw materials, safety and security, production and services. The lighthouse projects – such as “Cell-free bioproduction”, “Fraunhofer electromobility II system research project”, “E3 production” and ”Rare earth metals” – are designed to bring together Fraunhofer expertise in a flexible, interdisciplinary approach to future-oriented areas of research and to involve industrial partners at an early stage. Due to its strategic focus on the business areas of medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, environment and energy, Fraunhofer IGB is involved as a partner in three of the four projects named above. Cell-free bioproduction Cell-free bioproduction is at the interface between engineer- ing and the life sciences. In the Fraunhofer “Cell-free biopro- duction” lighthouse project eight institutes (IBMT, IME, IPA, IPK, ISI, ISIT, IZM and IGB) have been working together since 2011 on developing an alternative technology platform to tra- ditional biotechnological processes, with the goal of accelerat- ing protein synthesis, e.g. of antibodies, by a large factor. In addition, cell-free bioproduction makes it possible to produce a far greater range of proteins by biotechnological means. The guiding idea of this ambitious project is to find efficient ways to synthesize proteins without relying on living cells. Many proteins can only be produced to a limited extent or not at all in microbial or cell cultures – for instance, proteins toxic to cells, toxin fusion proteins of interest to the pharmaceutical industry, or membrane proteins as targets for drug develop- ment. So-called in-vitro protein synthesis overcomes these dis- advantages associated with living cells: here, the biomolecules are, in contrast to conventional methods, produced in cell extracts (lysates). The extracts basically retain only the protein synthesis machinery of the cell, with the effect that, for ex- ample, there is no longer a requirement to maintain a complex cellular metabolism with a plethora of products. Instead, the synthetic potential of the lysate can be focused solely on ac- tively synthesizing the desired product. The project has identified, analyzed and optimized the first key parameters for the industrial realization of cell-free bio- production, i.e. protein synthesis. The new insights acquired have already facilitated a tenfold reduction in the cost of small and medium-scale protein production. The Fraunhofer IGB is using cell-free lysates to develop specific antibodies that can modulate excessive immune reactions and which might help to moderate septic shock. One of the biggest challenges on the road to industrial scale is the supply of energy to the cell- free lysates. With its successful use of the membrane-bound protein ATP synthase as an energy regeneration system, the Fraunhofer IGB has achieved first promising results here. The 1

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