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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nSpearheaded by Georgia Lagoudas, Senior Advisor for Biotechnology and Bioeconomy at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy who is responsible for implementing the Executive Order<\/a>, the document contains a number of specific strategies developed by agencies like the USDA, NIH, NSF, DOE, and DOD for introducing climate change solutions, food and agriculture innovation, supply chain resilience, human health, as well as cross-cutting advances that can have an impact across all those sectors. Representatives from those agencies spoke at the Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference (ABLC) panel this week, outlining their plans to tackle these ambitious goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The panel was led by Lagoudas, who will be speaking at the SynBioBeta Conference<\/a> in Oakland, CA, this May, along with other government representatives talking about prioritizing the bioeconomy and how we can achieve these goals through a coordinated effort. The speakers highlighted a number of important ways to harness the power of biology, including leveraging biodiversity, enhancing the design and production of biological systems, expanding the capability to build and measure these systems, developing new biomanufacturing approaches, scaling up novel technologies, and translating them into products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Drilling down to some more concrete goals, the report highlights the need to decarbonize the chemicals and materials industries, develop more carbon-neutral transportation and fuels, introduce more sustainable agricultural practices, and remove CO\u2082 from our atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, who is Director of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy pointed out that there are 200+ million acres of non-producing land in the US available for carbon-negative feedstocks that could be converted into useful materials. Dr. Karama Neal from the Rural Business-Cooperative Service of USDA also focused on the importance of accelerating research into climate-smart feedstocks that secure the nation\u2019s food supplies and can serve as building blocks for the materials, chemicals, and biomolecules made with biology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the goals outlined in the report is: “In 20 years, produce at least 30% of the U.S. chemical demand via sustainable and cost-effective biomanufacturing pathways.” Gaurab Chakrabarti, CEO of Solugen<\/a>, a company working to decarbonize the chemical industry, thinks that is an achievable goal, especially if the government gets involved: \u201cWe have already seen this with solar, EVs, and fuels. Ethanol was mandated to be blended into fuels. Why can\u2019t chemical products have that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019d argue this is the start of the \u2018chemical transition\u2019 where we move from petro- to bio-based chemicals,\u201d Chakrabarti says. \u201cWhat this will look like in the next few years is starting to blend more bio-based chemicals into traditional products to decrease the need for petrochemicals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another goal set by NIH is: \u201cIn 20 years, decrease the manufacturing cost of cell-based therapies 10-fold.\u201d Arguably, this ambitious target requires a coordinated effort and technology transfer between industries \u2013 for example, by using the tools developed by the field of synthetic biology to design and manufacture cell-based therapies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Tara Schwetz, the Acting Principal Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), pointed out the need to capitalize on these innovations to bring down the cost of cell-based therapies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs we discussed in the report, the industry should prioritize building new technologies to increase the efficacy of cell-based therapies,\u201d said Schwetz. \u201cFor instance, we can use biomaterials, nanomaterials, synthetic biology, or other approaches to allow for these therapies to be better priced, safer, and more readily available to everyone across the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lagoudas emphasized that \u201conly by setting bold goals and driving towards those goals can we deliver on the promise of the bioeconomy.\u201d She thinks the bold vision outlined in the reports can only be made possible through the combined effort from the U.S. government agencies, industry, academic and non-profit sectors who participate in creating a vibrant ecosystem dedicated to advancing the national bioeconomy goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen we talk about these public-private partnerships, we need to think not only about funding but also shared resources,\u201d says Dr. Erwin Gianchandani NSF\u2019s assistant director for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships. In his opinion, many resources that have already been developed could be leveraged to stimulate innovation in adjacent areas. \u201cWe have these large datasets, testbed environments, prototyping environments, and other resources. The big question is \u2013 how do we unlock those and make them available to the broader ecosystem?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the government can play a significant role to facilitate collaborations and enable access to resources to stimulate innovation and revolutionize entire industries \u2013 from chemicals, fuels, and materials to food and medicines. Organizations like BioMADE<\/a> and BioFabUSA<\/a> play a big role in fostering the ecosystem where industry, academia, and government work together to solve the big challenges we face. In addition, they help establish biomanufacturing priorities to guide research efforts and invest in the \u201cfundamental\u201d type of research that can have broad implications across many sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need action now both from within the federal government but also outside of the government,\u201d said Lagoudas. \u201cThis is the only way we can reach these goals and we hope to find opportunities for collaboration with the private sector.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The full PDF report can be accessed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thank you to <\/em>Katia Tarasava<\/em><\/a> for additional research and reporting on this article. I\u2019m the founder of SynBioBeta and some of the companies I write about are sponsors of the <\/em>SynBioBeta conference<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>weekly digest<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in September, President Biden inked a new executive order setting the government on a bold new course for creating a\u00a0national biostrategy. One of the first tasks assigned to each of the government agencies was to develop goals that outline how they plan to realize the vision of a bio-based economy. Yesterday the White House […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Number of specific strategies developed by agencies like the USDA, NIH, NSF, DOE, and DOD and different change solutions can have an impact across a lot of sectors","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5838],"supplier":[21121,21123,21575,15812,9765,3377,8400,2959,11236,9223],"class_list":["post-127467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioeconomy","supplier-biofabusa-manufacturing-usa","supplier-bioindustries-manufacturing-and-design-ecosystem-biomade","supplier-nih-national-library-for-medicine-national-center-for-biotechnology-information","supplier-solugen-inc","supplier-synbiobeta","supplier-the-white-house","supplier-usda","supplier-us-department-of-defense-dod","supplier-u-s-department-of-energy","supplier-u-s-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127467"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=127467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sustainable agriculture and chemicals<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Accelerating innovation in cell-based therapies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Investment in technology and infrastructure development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n