Professor Colin Robinson (PI) and Professor Mark Smales (Co-I) from the School of Biosciences have been awarded a £530,000 grant from the EU for their project ‘Greener, more sustainable platforms for high-value recombinant protein production’. The grant is funded by one of the first wave of Doctoral Network grants from the MSCA actions; these DN grants replace the previous Innovative Training Networks that have funded EU PhD networks for many years.
The grant funds 2 Research Assistants (who will register for PhDs) and is part of a collaboration involving partners from the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Germany, and Austria. The aim of the project is to develop new platforms for the biopharma and industrial enzyme sectors, which together are valued at over USD 300 billion per year. At the same time, the work will seek to develop new approaches that will enable companies in these sectors to be more sustainable at multiple levels.
Professor Robinson says: “this project has an unusually ‘global’ reach because we have involved groups from our recent Global Challenges Research Fund project as Associate Partners. The aim is to introduce these Thai, Vietnamese, and Malaysian groups to major European academic and industrial groups in order to exchange ideas and techniques. The project will start around January once the Research Assistants have been recruited.”
Congratulations to Colin and Mark on this achievement.
If anyone requires further information on these MSCA grants or on this particular project, feel free to get in touch (c.robinson-504@kent.ac.uk, C.M.Smales@kent.ac.uk).