Monday, January 24^th 2011, 17 c.t.

G2-104, CeBiTec Building

Prof. Dr. Rainer Fischer

Fraunhofer Institut für Molekularbiologie und Angewandte Ökologie, Aachen

From innovation-driven ideas via applied R&D to marketable products

The Fraunhofer IME is an excellent case study showing the Fraunhofer Business Model in action. From its small beginnings in 2001, the IME has grown into a large and thriving institute by leveraging its expertise and intellectual property, and using this to acquire third party revenues. This has resulted in the establishment of three new national divisions, two overseas Fraunhofer Centers in the US and Chile, several spin-off companies and an impressive portfolio of IP families and peer reviewed publications.

The industrial applications of plant biotechnology provide a good example of the IME’s strategy under the Fraunhofer business model. Many public/PPP projects have been secured to develop platforms and enabling technologies for the production of valuable molecules in plants. The IME has leveraged the expertise and IP gained in these projects to attract industry contracts, and has invested in infrastructure that provides a unique selling point. The GMP facility in Aachen, which was developed as part of the EU project Pharma-Planta, boasts the only manufacturing license in Europe for the production of pharmaceuticals in transgenic tobacco plants. The facility is also licensed for recombinant protein production in bacteria and yeast. The investment has attracted multiple public and industry projects from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Many other market-oriented projects have been secured because of the IME’s growing expertise in plant biotechnology, including collaborations with big pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies. The IME’s US subsidiary has developed a virus-based expression platform for transient expression in plants, which has attracted six Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grants.

Plant derived pharmaceuticals provide only one example of the IME’s R&D program, which diversifies into agricultural improvement (conventional breeding and GM), medicine (improved therapeutics and diagnostics based on antibodies), the production of allergen-free rubber, the improved production of biofuels from plants and algae, technical enzymes from insects and microbes, novel fibers and the development of dendrimers with tailored properties. Many of these projects are being carried out in the context of the newly-established Fraunhofer Chile Research for Systems Biotechnology, which fully embraces the Fraunhofer business model.

Prof. Dr. Alfred Pühler