The ECI conference "Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XXII: The Dawn of a New Era will be held from June 26 – 30, 2022 at the Grand Fiesta Americana Coral Beach Hotel in Cancun, Mexico.
From antibiotics that save lives to laundry detergent enzymes that save energy, the products arising from processes that use biological systems have had a transformative impact on society. However, what has developed thus far is just the start. Emerging tools and technologies, such as synthetic biology, genome engineering, and artificial intelligence, are providing new avenues to harness the power of the living world to sense and process information, make matter, and carry out exquisite chemistry at ambient temperatures and pressures. As a result, we find ourselves in the dawn of a new era in biochemical and molecular engineering. This new era is advancing our capacity to partner with biology to make what is needed, where and when it is needed, on a sustainable and renewable basis. From RNA vaccines for defeating COVID-19 to carbon-negative manufacturing for addressing the climate crisis, from DNA in test tubes for storing information to distributed diagnostics for human and environmental health, from making meatless meats to cellular therapies for addressing disease, this conference will focus on exciting recent progress in the broad fields of Biochemical and Molecular Engineering.
Conference Sessions
Cellular therapies
Synthetic biology offers the ability to go beyond traditional therapeutic interventions and to fundamentally alter the way in which the body maintains a healthy state and responds to disease. This session will explore how customized cellular devices are enabling sophisticated cell-based therapeutics, microbiome reprogramming, and altering the way we diagnose disease.
RNA vaccines
RNA vaccines have arrived. From vaccine development to mRNA design to scale-up manufacturing to lipid nanoparticle developments and delivery, this session will focus on all aspects of RNA vaccine technology.
Accelerating therapeutics time to market
Protein therapeutics offer a significant opportunity to treat a broad range of chemical and biological threats. However, the timeline for developing medical countermeasures is long. Here, this session discusses new innovative technologies to accelerate time to market, which may allow emergency use therapeutics to be developed and deployed on the scale of months.
Reimagining protein synthesis
Protein medicines have revolutionized our ability to prevent and treat human diseases. Yet, the World Health Organization estimates that at least 30% of the world’s population still lacks access to essential medicines. Due to the expense and time required to build manufacturing facilities and maintain refrigerated supply chains, the current centralized manufacturing structure limits our ability to distribute protein medicines. Here, we will discuss new approaches to make medicines when and where they are needed, including continuous manufacturing.
Portable, on-demand diagnostics
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a current limitation of laboratory-based testing: it does not scale with a sudden and dramatic increase in volume. This session will discuss emerging innovations for point-of-need and/or wearable biosensing technologies (e.g., CRISPR-based diagnostics) that can be optimized to detect analytes of interest for human health, water quality, agriculture, and biosecurity.
Carbon-negative manufacturing
The accelerating climate crisis combined with rapid population growth are posing some of the most urgent economic and social challenges to humankind, all linked to the unabated release and accumulation of CO2 in our atmosphere. This session will focus on new manufacturing practices for low-cost, environmentally sustainable, and carbon-negative biomanufacturing.
Bad plastics to good plastics
Plastic is a lightweight, versatile, and strong material that is used worldwide for numerous applications (e.g., food packaging). Despite all the innovations brought by plastics, management of plastic waste has become a global challenge. This session will discuss recent innovations in the deconstruction of plastics and subsequent biological conversion and upcycling into bioproducts to enable a circular economy, as well as the creation of transformative classes of functional, sustainably-sourced, biodegradable, and compostable materials.
Microbiome engineering and co-culture innovations
Industrial biotechnology has flourished by exploiting the predictability and robustness of single cultures for biomanufacturing. Yet nature is filled with microbial consortia – microbiomes – that are both free-living and symbiotic. Some consortia, including those used in wastewater treatment, provide both increased functionality and enhanced robustness. It stands to reason then that mixed cultures may open the door for new products and processes. This session will focus on advances in engineering and exploiting mixed cultures, from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives.
Biomaterials
Materials have a transformative impact on all aspects of our lives. To maintain and improve the current quality of living, sustainable alternatives to traditional synthesis and manufacturing practices must be found. This session will focus on new advances in the development of genetically encoded materials, metamaterials, and bio-responsive nanomaterials.
Nutrition
In 2021, almost 10% of the world population experienced hunger and by 2050, a 70% increase in the demand for food production is expected. To feed the growing world population, alternative approaches that do not require added arable land and taxing inputs are required. This session will focus on new advances such as meatless or air-based meat production, dairy-free milk production and production of other food ingredients.
Gene editing
CRISPR is one of the most powerful discoveries of the last decade and the field of gene editing is progressing at warp speed, transforming the way scientists execute large-scale genome modifications as well as understanding and evolution of biological function. This session will focus on advances in high-throughput and precision gene editing technologies, high-efficiency and multiplexed genome engineering approaches, programmable dynamic control of gene expression, and application of CRISPR systems for domestication of non-model organisms.
Machine learning-guided design and automation
Advances in wet-lab technologies and automation have made strain construction and screening increasingly high-throughput, allowing for generation of large and rich biological datasets. In silico methods for genotype-phenotype mapping are critical for closing the high-throughput engineering cycle by enabling efficient learning and re-design. Together, these tools can enable access to more complex phenotypes and significantly reduce development time. This session will focus on developments in lab automation, modeling, and machine learning methods that offer a path toward more predictability in metabolic engineering.
Evolution meets engineering design
Biochemical engineers use both principles of rational and evolutionary engineering to construct biological systems. Since rational concepts may have practical limits in a biological context, this session will focus on efforts to use evolutionary approaches (e.g., directed evolution) in the context of engineering design. Topics include continuous evolution, multiplexed evolution, and protein engineering, among others.