Sustainable Fibers for Bioseparation: Innovation, Market Transfer, and a Collaborative Model

• Autor(a) principal: Dinis, José Pedro Fradique Lourenço Dias
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/146082
• topic: go-to-market; knowledge production; purification; biopharmaceuticals; innovation; collaboration; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Química

The present thesis was performed within the framework of a collaborative European research project, the PURE project integrated in the EU FET-OPEN program. The research approach of this thesis involves the combination of three areas (sociology, economics, and biotechnology) to develop a go-to-market strategy and an attempt to design a preliminary collaborative model for PURE. The PURE consortium is a network formed by three academic institutions and one SME. The nature of the network was studied to develop a collaborative model. The theoretical approach in this work followed Gibbons’ Mode 2 Production of Knowledge Theory and it was found that transdisciplinarity, mechanisms for sharing knowledge, communication and trust were key factors for collaboration in this organization. The technology explored is the production of adsorbents modified with affinity ligands for the purification of biopharmaceuticals, like monoclonal antibodies and virus-like particles (VLPs). In this thesis, we showed the successful modification of adsorbents with ligands for the capture of VLPs in purification processes. For the research of applications, only two applications were considered viable since they were the most innovative and with a higher market need: adsorbents for the purification of monoclonal antibodies and for the purification of virus-like particles. For the selected applications, competitive and market growth analysis were performed. The preferred application is the purification of virus-like particles given that it has less competition and a greater market growth. Finally, regarding the business model, the possibility of licencing of the technology is considered an interesting option for the chosen application but other business models can be considered according to the application or product that is developed from the PURE technology.