Scaling bio-based products requires integrated technical collaboration across strain engineering, fermentation, downstream processing, and analytics. Full-stack approaches—where startups, CDMOs, and platform technology providers align early on—can optimize yield, reduce variability, and lower cost of goods (COGS) at commercial scale. This session explores case studies of cross-company collaboration, from co-development of microbial strains and bioreactor designs to shared process analytics and predictive modeling. Hear how teams are breaking down technical silos to accelerate scale-up, improve reproducibility, and create competitive, sustainable manufacturing solutions that bring synthetic biology products from the lab to the market efficiently.

Scaling bio-based products to commercial production requires balancing technical readiness with market and financial realities. This session examines the capital investments, regulatory planning, and supply chain strategies necessary to move beyond the pilot stage. Experts will share lessons on aligning production capacity with demand forecasts, managing operational risk, and structuring partnerships that unlock funding and market access. Attendees will gain practical insights into navigating investor expectations, scaling efficiently without compromising quality, and making strategic decisions that ensure products can succeed commercially while meeting evolving market needs and sustainability goals.

Enzymes are becoming the precision tools behind cleaner, more efficient, and more sustainable production across both home-care and food manufacturing. In cleaning products, next-generation enzymes replace harsh chemicals with biodegradable, high-performance biocatalysts that work at lower temperatures and deliver superior stain, odor, and grease removal. In food processing, engineered proteases, lipases, amylases, and fiber-modifying enzymes are unlocking new textures, cleaner labels, better stability, and reduced energy use—reshaping how everything from dairy and bakery to beverages and plant proteins are made.

Industrial biotech faces repeated “valleys of death” between laboratory success and commercial manufacturing, driven by a combination of technological uncertainty, scale-dependent constraints, and (mis)alignment between engineering reality and investment expectations. Promising technologies often fail not because the science is wrong, but because scale-up trajectories are built on insufficient data, optimistic assumptions, and decision-making based on the 1st product specifications from the lab that do not translate to industrial conditions. This panel returns to fundamentals, drawing on real-world experience from piloting, process engineering, and early industrialization to examine where and why scale-up breaks down. Experts will discuss how important the scale-up journey is to align technology performance with investor expectations, support sound business cases, and turn the industrial biotech toolbox into a more robust, scalable, and profitable manufacturing platform.