When people think about scale-up, they often imagine a larger fermenter: a 100 L reactor. A 1,000 L pilot plant. Or eventually a 100,000 L production facility.
But after years working in industrial biotechnology, I’ve come to a different conclusion.
Scale-up doesn’t begin when you leave the laboratory. It begins when you design your very first experiment. Every early decision shapes what becomes possible later.
– Which host organism do you choose?
– Which analytical method do you rely on?
– How complex is your purification strategy?
– Can the raw materials be sourced consistently?
– Will the process remain economically viable at an industrial scale?

Many promising technologies don’t fail because the biology doesn’t work. They fail because lab success isn’t designed to translate to manufacturing success.
One lesson I’ve learned is that every experiment should answer two questions instead of one:
“Does it work?”
and
“Could this realistically work at scale?”

That second question changes everything. It influences experimental design, process development, downstream strategy, regulatory planning, and ultimately the economics of the entire project. In industrial biotechnology, scale-up is not the last phase of development. It is a design principle from Day One.

I’m curious to hear your perspective:
At what stage do you think teams should start thinking about scale-up?

#IndustrialBiotechnology#Bioprocessing#ScaleUp#Fermentation#SyntheticBiology#ProcessDevelopment

One lesson has followed me throughout my career—from recombinant proteins in duckweed to microbial fermentation and alternative proteins. When a project struggles, the first instinct is often to optimize the technology.
Increase expression.
Improve the strain.
Adjust the fermentation conditions.
Screen more variants.
But over time, I realized something surprising. Many biotechnology projects are not limited by the technology they use. They are limited by the assumptions they start with. I’ve seen teams spend months improving protein yield, only to discover that purification became the real bottleneck. I’ve seen impressive laboratory results fail to translate into industrial reality because scalability, process economics, or regulatory constraints had not been considered early enough.
In biotechnology, solving the wrong problem exceptionally well is still solving the wrong problem. This is one of the reasons why industrial biotechnology fascinates me. Success rarely depends on a single breakthrough. It emerges from understanding how biology, engineering, manufacturing, downstream processing, economics, and sustainability interact as one system.
The most valuable question is often not:
« How can we improve this technology? »
Instead, it is:
« Are we solving the problem that truly matters? »
As our industry embraces AI, synthetic biology, precision fermentation, and increasingly sophisticated engineering tools, I believe our greatest competitive advantage will not simply be building better technologies. It will be asking better questions. Because great scientists optimize experiments. Great R&D teams optimize systems.

What biological or technological assumption do you think our industry should challenge more often?
I’d love to hear your perspective.

#IndustrialBiotechnology#Bioprocessing#SyntheticBiology#Fermentation#Innovation

After working with different biological production platforms for many years, I have stopped asking one question:
“Which platform is the best?”

I no longer think that is the right question. A better question is, « Which platform is best suited for this specific product, application, and manufacturing context?”
During my career, I have worked with recombinant proteins across different systems: therapeutic protein engineering, plant molecular farming using duckweed, and precision fermentation in industrial biotechnology.
Each platform taught me something different. Microbial fermentation can offer speed, scalability, and process control. Plant-based systems can open alternative possibilities for molecular farming and complex biological production. Other platforms may be more suitable when protein complexity, post-translational modifications, downstream processing, or regulatory requirements become the main constraints.
There is no universally “best” production platform.
The real challenge is understanding the target protein, the biology of the host, the manufacturing constraints, the economics, and the final application.
In biomanufacturing, the future will not be built by one platform replacing all others. It will be built by choosing the right platform for the right problem.

What do you think: will the future of biotechnology be dominated by one production platform or by complementary platforms working together?

🔑 From biology to scalable biomanufacturing.

#Biotechnology#Biomanufacturing#IndustrialBiotechnology#PrecisionFermentation#MolecularFarming