Innovation Fund Denmark
Innobooster
“With the support from Innobooster we can now develop software for laboratories around the world and help them save money on expensive equipment.”
Laurent Vermue
Co-founder, BioLean ApS
Green Transition for Biotechnology
BioLean ApS
The focal point in a sustainable transition is recycling and utilizing all resources to avoid throwing usable material in the trash. A green transition is also entering the world of biotechnology with help from three Ph.D. students from DTU and their newly founded company BioLean ApS. By using artificial intelligence and virtualization, BioLean aims to save time and money for biotechnology – and least of all the load on the environment.
The research team from DTU includes co-founder Laurent Vermue, who specializes in Machine Learning, co-founder Isuru A. Udugama, who specializes in designing regulatory and advanced process controls and Jeppe Nørregaard, who also specializes in Machine Learning and is part of BioLean part-time, are all experts in machine software. They founded BioLean on January 1st, 2020, and already have prominent customers such as Novo Nordisk, Xellia Pharmaceuticals, and CP Kelco.
BioLean is the first on the market to develop a new technology for column chromatography. Chromatography is a chemical technique used to separate substances in a sample, e.g., in laboratories, using glass tubes. The technique is costly for laboratories and the environment because it requires long response time and sporadic replacements of expensive glass tubes.
The replacement of the expensive glass tubes happens either long before they are used up, to ensure a lower risk of unwanted concentrations of impurities and production interruptions in the laboratory work, or after the production process breaks down. With BioLean, the laboratories will be able to increase efficiency by 10-25%, as it provides real-time answers of the chromatography with an accurate prediction that specifies when the glass tubes should be replaced. That way fewer functional resources are wasted, and the work is not delayed by a sudden production interruption.
With the Innobooster support from Innovation Fund Denmark, BioLean will be developed further on a global scale, with a focus on making the software product even more customer-friendly and easy to operate, so that resources are fully utilized, and still, functional chromatography tubes do not end up in the trash.
