[This article will also appear in a special newsletter being sent out later today that will highlight several presentations that will be take place during next week’s BioProcess International Conference in Boston. Although the construction industry is not a topic that will be discussed at that Conference—as far as I am aware—I decided to include this short article in the newsletter for the Boston meeting because of the impact biomanufacturing is already having on a range of different industries.]
Biomanufacturing is primarily associated with the production of biotherapeutic products. Thus, any article that links it to the construction industry should, even if only by curiosity, be of interest.
Melik Demirel, PhD, is a professor at Penn State and the founder of Tandem Repeat Technologies. He is also a Forbes Technology Council member who has penned several articles for that site, e.g., AI in Biomanufacturing: From Protein Prediction to Fashion Design and Biomanufacturing: Present and Future.
But his most recent written contribution to the Forbes website, The Impact of Biomanufacturing on Construction Technologies, lists three “examples of innovative construction technology trends as a result of biomanufacturing: self-assembling materials, bioengineered concrete using diatoms, and structural health monitoring using biosensors.”
Although I have read articles about the industrial implications of biomanufacturing in the past, the construction story made me give much more and serious thought to biomanufacturing’s impact beyond drug production. As it turns out, in March, 2020, Audrey Carleton wrote an eye-catching blog post on How biotechnology could revolutionize the construction industry. Another article Biomanufacturing: How Biology is Driving Manufacturing into the Future, which discusses biomanufacturing’s impact on a broader level on a number of industries, appears on the Advanced Technology Services website.
Will be interesting to watch how biomanufacturing continues to influence industries other than biotherapeutics as innovative technologies and products continue to be developed by researchers working across the entire biotechnology spectrum.
John Sterling ([email protected]) is Editor-in-Chief of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN).
