The Advanced Biomanufacturing Centre brings together expertise in biology and chemistry to uniquely tackle challenges.
The overall mission of the Advanced Biomanufacturing Centre (ABC) is the pursuit of new methods for the manufacture of medicinally important compounds, chemical building blocks, and new materials. In the future, petrochemicals for manufacturing will not be available. New ways to provide these building blocks will have to be discovered. The answers will come from the fusion of biology and chemistry that historically have existed as “two solitudes”, but which will now solve the supply problems for chemical manufacturing.
Biology provides methods for “programming” plants and other living organisms in order that they make specific chemical substances. Chemical methods transform such building blocks into more complex products, ranging from pharmaceuticals to materials required by society.
The Advanced Biomanufacturing Centre recruits the highest caliber graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to not only tackle existing industrial challenges but to also develop unique techniques and methodologies for commercialization. Researchers are members of a transdisciplinary team that works from the research labs at Brock University, BioLinc, and industrial facilities developing a distinctive blend of fundamental and applied science.
Brock and Niagara have the infrastructure to exploit the results of this work. New companies and existing companies will come to Niagara to benefit from the commercial potential of the work accomplished in the ABC. The Cairns Family Health and Biosciences Research Complex and its business incubator, coupled with participation of the Office of Research Services and its Director of Business Development and Commercialization, together with the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce, provide the critical mass to support and exploit this opportunity. This Centre combines transdisciplinarity, creativity, commercialization opportunities, and regional context.
Contact us
For more information, please contact:
Paul Zelisko
Director of the Advanced Biomanufacturing Centre
Department of Chemistry
905 688-5550 x4389
pzelisko@brocku.ca
