Namibia Workshop SANUMARC Univeristy of Namibia, Hentiesbay 3 - 5 June 2010

Presenter Biographies

EXPLORING MICROALGAL BIOPHARMACEUTICALS

The general perception of microalgae has changed profoundly over the last 5 years. This is largely due to the fact that global warming and related topics, apparently caused by a steady increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere, has caused great concern among private and public decision makers.

In 2004, microalgae were poised to follow the green biotech boom, to become the next-generation bioreactors to produce antibodies or vaccines in Chlamydomonas. With the onset of the CO₂ debate, many microalgae companies made use of opportunity to widen their business perspectives and partly shift focus from biotechnology to biofuel applications.

Phytolutions has positioned itself as a full-service provider for all microalgal requirements, from production to downstreaming. Phytolutions has developed a variety of low-cost photobioreator systems based on PE-films, easy to setup and easy to maintain. Also production and proprietory downstreaming technology has been developed and optimised to ensure energy conserving production of algal biomass, thus ensuring a positive energy balance. Furthermore, this low cost production system is now being adapted to the production of high value algae for food, feed and pharma applications. High value products like PUFAs, colorants and anti-oxidants put the production system to a serious test.

We will present data of from the past decade of microalgal production in Germany, covering the production of recombinant proteins in algae using CO₂ from Germany‘s largest flue gas site to feed the algae, and present key improvements and changes in the lifespan of closed photobioreactors. To further address some of the biological questions associated with algal production, Phytolutions will present its biodiversity approach, aimed at uncovering microalgae’s hidden potentials.

Presented by:

Theodor Fahrendorf received his Ph.D in 1990 from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He has broad experience in entomology and plant biochemistry. He worked as a postdoctoral scientist (focussing on molecular plant biology and plant transformation) in the USA (1990-1995) and Denmark (1995 -1998).

In 1998 he returned to Germany and joined the newly founded green biotech company Novoplant GmbH as a business development manager. He became managing director in 1999. Novoplant developed new hyper immune products, based on recombinant single chain antibodies produced in plants, for veterinary applications.  In 2004 he co-founded Novagreen GmbH, who developed several low-cost production systems for microalgae and served as managing director until 2009. In 2008 these bioreactors were installed at Germany‘s largest flue gas site at a RWE power plant near Cologne. The production site is run and managed by Phytolutions GmbH, a classical spin-off from Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany. In 2009 Dr Fahrendorf moved on to Phytolutions GmbH to coordinate and build businesses and build up production sites the newly established Phytolutions Africa company, based in South Africa and Namibia.