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ePaper created 2017-03-14, 10:25:37 | version 1.49.03
HIGHLIGHTS 2016 RESEARCH – COLLABORATIONS AND PROJECTS CO2 interconnected – from a climate risk factor to a highly sought-after raw material Effective polio vaccines by means of electron irradiation Since September 2016, four Fraunhofer Institutes have been working to produce more effective vaccines against polio in a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and coordinated by Fraunhofer IZI. For inactivat- ing polio viruses and other pathogens, a new technology based on low-energy electron irradiation is developed. The advantage: irradiation destroys the genetic material that the viruses need to multiply, whilst achieving better preservation of the antigenic structural proteins important for the immune response compared to conventional inactivation methods. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the project with a grant of USD 1.85 million. The aim is that the new process will save costs in manufacturing, enabling poorer countries too to better access the urgently-required polio vaccines. Fraunhofer IGB will carry out the investigations of antigen quality of the new polio vaccine after inactivation of the virus by means of electron beams. The ZIM cooperation network, ‘UseCO2’, funded by the Ger- man Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs (BMWi), was ap- proved in July 2016. The network extends across 19 partners from research and industry who are amongst others develop- ing biotechnological and physico-chemical processes to bind carbon dioxide from the air, and make it reusable as a raw material for the production of basic and specialty chemicals or fuel. Fraunhofer IGB is involved in the network through its Straubing-based branch: Bio, Electro and Chemocatalysis BioCat. Gasoline additives from sugar 1 Until now, fuel additives such as isooctane have been pro- duced from mineral oil. Commissioned by the French-German company Global Bioenergies, the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP in Leuna will soon produce biobased additives for gasoline. The CBP researchers develop the appropriate chemical processes, validate them and transpose them onto an industrial scale. The starting material is biobased isobutene that has been produced since the end of 2016, in a pilot plant installed at Fraunhofer CBP by Global Bioenergies. 2 2