London and New York, April 4th 2023

FabricNano and Sumitomo Chemical America announced today their partnership to develop a biomanufacturing process for industrial chemicals in various application fields to reduce the carbon footprint of commodity chemical processes globally. Cell-free biomanufacturing will unlock the application realm of synthetic biology and offers the promise to radically scale its impact. Because of the inherent limitations of traditional, cell-based systems, from process efficiencies to purification costs, traditional systems cannot reach the same markets (and cannot be as cost-effective) as cell-free technology. FabricNano’s cell-free approach is unique because of its applicability across industries as well as its ability to build upon protein engineering technologies efficiently while keeping process development costs as low as possible.

FabricNano, a London-based enzyme immobilization and biocatalysis company, has been working with Sumitomo Chemical America for the past year to build the individual components of the process for a target chemical output. The latter half of the partnership will focus on working together to scale the process.

“Sumitomo Chemical Group has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Under this policy, we are advancing initiatives from two perspectives: our “obligation” to bring the Sumitomo Chemical Group’s GHG emissions close to zero, and our “contribution” to reducing global GHG emissions through our products and technologies. Synthetic biology is a key strategic area for us to accomplish those goals, and it will allow us to not only grow our business but also fight climate change,” said Scott Mitchell, President & CEO at Sumitomo Chemical America. “We believe cell-free bio-manufacturing can play a key role and complement both our synthetic biology activities and chemical synthesis manufacturing. We are encouraged by the progress made so far in our partnership with FabricNano and look forward to even more advancements in the months to come.”