What is a Biofoundry ?
Biofoundries are advanced technological platforms designed to accelerate the engineering of biological systems.
Traditionally, scientists must test tenths or even hundreds of conditions to engineer and refine biological systems, making the process slow and repetitive. In addition, biological research is still very artisanal with few automations. Biofoundries address this by separating intellectual work from labor-intensive tasks, utilizing state-of-the-art automation equipment to standardize, speed up and multiplex experiments, allowing more repeatable outcomes.
With its expertise, the Paris Biofoundry can assist academic and private organizations, for instance in developing and optimizing workflows, setting more ambitious targets, and collaborating on grant and funding applications.
Design, Build, Test, Learn
In order to engineer biological systems to carry out desired tasks, scientists go through continuous improvement cycles called Design-Build-Test-Learn or DBTL cycles.
During each and every cycle, one can find the optimal design and improve it continually with further cycles. Biofoundries accelerate research by automating the DBTL cycles. They rely on dedicated software for design, robotic automation platforms for the building and testing phases, and analysis software for learning. Robots can handle more samples simultaneously, and go through more DBTL cycles than it is possible manually. This allows researchers to obtain more and higher-quality data and get results faster.
Made in France
Although more than 30 biofoundries already exist around the world, the Paris Biofoundry is the first academic biofoundry in France and a unique Green Biofoundry. The Paris Biofoundry addresses the following needs:
- Speeding up academic research: The Biofoundry provides state-of-the-art equipment and expertise at the service of researchers to help them achieve their results faster, and to push back the frontiers of possible research projects.
- Providing a structure to accelerate biotech innovation: The Biofoundry partners with private companies from startups to multinational entreprises, to help them creating new products and enrich their IP portfolio.
- Training the future of Synthetic Biology : the Paris Biofoundry also plays a critical role in education and training, offering specialized programs for students and researchers. By providing access to its facilities and fostering a collaborative environment, the platform helps to cultivate the next generation of leaders in synthetic biology and related fields. This will be made easier by the location of our facilities, in the core of the best French Universities, and the location of iGEM competition, now in Paris.