Will Boosting Biofoundries Transform India's Biomanufacturing Landscape?

Biofoundries hold the potential to emerge as the backbone of biomanufacturing and synthetic biology, offering integrated infrastructure to streamline the design, construction, and testing of genetically engineered organisms.

- Shivani Thakar

Biofoundry is a place where biomanufacturing meets automation. The highly modular structure of a biofoundry helps accelerate the design-buildtest-learn (DBTL) workflow to deliver products fast and in a streamlined fashion. Advanced platforms to enable rapid, high-throughput experimentation, and automating processes that were once labour-intensive and time-consuming is a central theme. India has come up with multiple initiatives to support and set up biofoundries, including the BioE3 (Biotechnology for Economy, Environment and Employment) Policy, the Bio-RIDE scheme, and the Vigyan Dhara scheme. The BioE3 Policy lays out plans for accelerating the transition to biomanufacturing by promoting integrated use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), digitalisation with ‘omics’, and upstream biotechnology innovations through bio-AI hubs, biofoundries, and biomanufacturing hubs across the country. With the new BioE3 Policy in place, coming years will provide insight into how biofoundries will play a role in boosting innovation, scale-up and commercialisation of bio-based products. In addition, with a Global Biofoundry Alliance now established to coordinate biofoundry activities and innovations worldwide, the question arises: how is India positioned in this rapidly evolving field, and what role do biofoundries play in India’s biomanufacturing initiatives? Let's explore.

Why do we need biofoundries?