mfrances - CLASSY

Registration is open for the online CLASSY Workshop

September 7, 2023July 26, 2023 by mfrances

Join us online on 16th October 2023 from 13:00 – 15:30 CET for the CLASSY workshop “Bioreactions in flow reactors: bringing out the potential applications for cell-free synthetic biology“.

Are you working with enzymatic cell-free pathways in flow or are you using or developing (biocatalytic) flow chemistry technologies? Then you might be interested to join our workshop on the opportunities, technological challenges and bottlenecks for the application of immobilised enzymatic pathways! The CLASSY partners and scientists in systems chemistry will showcase the latest results of the project and several industry experts in the field of biocatalysis will participate in the event. Our invited guest speakers Dr. David Roura Padrosa (inSEIT Biotech), Dr. Mattia Lazzarotto and Dr. Stefan Payer (Enzyan Biocatalysis), Dr. Rob Schoevaart (ChiralVision), Dr.Javier Ibáñez (EnginZyme) and Dr. David Liese (Enzymicals), will present their latest research on the topic and will be available to answer questions.

To foster the knowledge exchange between the academic sector and industrial R&D departments, each presentation will be followed by a dedicated Q&A session. The workshop will be closed with a panel discussion with all the speakers, lead by Prof. Wolfgang Kroutil (Universität Graz) and Prof. Wilhelm Huck (Radboud University Nijmegen), concerning the potential applications of the Innovations in the industry. The workshop is free and open to all audiences. Do you want to know more? Check out the programme and register today!

ETH Zurich brings to CLASSY an award from the 17th International Symposium on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry

July 11, 2023July 11, 2023 by mfrances

The 17th International Symposium on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry (ISMSC 2023) took place during 25-29th June in Reykjavik, Iceland. The conference brought together approximately 500 scientists from all over the world. There was a breadth of topics covered, with a particular emphasis on supramolecular self-assembly, incl. dynamic, out-of-equilibrium and stimuli responsive systems, as well as molecular recognition and sensing.

Dr. Bartosz Lewandowski, Senior Scientist in the Wennemers Group at ETH Zurich, had the opportunity to present the work of the Wennemers Group on catalytic templated length-controlled oligomerization both in the form of a flash presentation and a poster, winning one of the awards for the best posters during the conference:

ISMSC 2023_ETH_Zurich

The results presented raised a lot of interest of the conference attendees. As Dr. Lewandowski's words: “I had many engaging and stimulating discussions during the poster session and afterwards covering both the already obtained data as well as new potential avenues and ideas for the project. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the five days in Reykjavik filled with outstanding science.”

Curious to learn more about the other results of the CLASSY project? Visit our Results page to learn more and follow @CLASSY_H2020 to stay tuned on the upcoming project updates.

Wide representation of CLASSY at the International Symposium on Biocatalysis and Biotransformations

July 3, 2023July 3, 2023 by mfrances

Our partners from the University of Graz represented the CLASSY project at the 16th International Symposium on Biocatalysis and Biotransformations (#Biotrans2023) in La Rochelle, France. Prof. Wolfgang Kroutil, Dr. Christoph K. Winkler, Dr. Mathias Pickl and Mr. Stefan Simic had the opportunity to showcase some of their latest research on the CLASSY project and discuss their enthusiasm for enzymes with fellow researchers.

The in-person event provided an overview of the latest advances in the fields of biocatalysis and biotransformations, gathering innovative and interdisciplinary strategies to overcome scientific and technological hurdles. Various topics had been covered, such as enzyme discovery and design, reaction engineering, enzyme mechanisms, computational methods, synthetic biology, metabolic engineering (chemo)enzymatic cascades, and industrial biocatalysis.

The Biocatalysis Research Group led by Prof. Kroutil had been busy presenting their latest works with two posters and two oral presentations during the conference:

CLASSY_Dissemination_Biotrans2023_Uni_Graz

It was a good opportunity to meet experts from different areas and exchange ideas with actors from the private and public sectors in a stimulating atmosphere. As Dr. Winkler words: “The conference was really informative and our contributions were well received”.

Curious to learn more about the other results of the CLASSY project? Visit our Results page to learn more and follow @CLASSY_H2020 to stay tuned on the upcoming project updates.

CLASSY partners meet in Nijmegen

December 13, 2022December 6, 2022 by mfrances

The 8th General Assembly meeting, hosted by the Radboud University, Institute for Molecules and Materials, took place in Nijmegen on the 15^th-16^th
of November 2022. The meeting brought together 20 participants from all partners to discuss the progress towards the development of a new type
of chemical reactor inspired by the way in which living systems manage to modulate catalytic activity.

Wilhelm Huck and his team from Radboud University Nijmegen (RU) opened the meeting, welcoming all partners. To start with the programme of Day 1, Emily Rose Ciscato from accelCH presented the overall status of the project, leading a discussion between partners on the positive feedback and suggestions for research avenues received from the European Commission and external experts who evaluated the project’s progress following the last project meeting held in June 2022.

The rest of the day was fully dedicated to research updates from all scientific work packages, starting with presentations from Gonen Ashkenasy (BGU) on his group’s progress with nucleic-acid-peptide chimeras and nucleopeptide replication networks, that were also presented in the recent publication ‘The Systems Chemistry of Nucleic-acid-Peptide Networks’ and at the GRC conference on Systems Chemistry earlier this year. Still in the systems chemistry area, Andrés de la Escosura, Marcos Sanz and Alonso Puente (UAM) presented their group’s latest progress including preliminary results in achieving controlled molecular
assembly-disassembly with new techniques. Showcasing their most recent publication with contributions from the RU team ‘Strategies for Transferring Photobiocatalysis to Continuous Flow Exemplified by Photodecarboxylation of Fatty Acids’, Stefan Simić and Mathias Pickl (UG) discussed their progress in bio- and organo-catalysis, followed by Bartosz Lewandowski and Jonas Rackl (ETH), who presented their progress and new research avenues in chemoenzymatic cascade reactions. Tao Zhou and Miglė Jakštaitė (RU) presented their computational and lab-based approaches to cascade reactions, leading into an update on the latest microfluidic device prototypes by Elwin Vrouwe (MICRONIT).

The consortium closed the first day full of presentations with a brief overview of the project’s innovation management approach and the key exploitable innovations identified so far by the partners.

Before the upcoming sessions of Day 2, all the partners had the chance to tour the Institute of Molecules and Materials laboratory facilities at the Huygens building, guided by Tao Zhou and Miglė Jakštaitė (RU), gathering a better feel and understanding of how the microfluidics research that they lead takes place. An interactive brainstorming and discussion session on the project’s exploitation opportunities then followed, led by Michael Hönger and Emily Rose Ciscato (accelCH). This laid the path for the project’s upcoming exploitation activities, planned for 2023. Several scientific discussion groups were then arranged for more in-depth exchange between partners.

For the second block of the day, all partners participated in a quiz led by accelCH while reminding everyone of the dissemination process in place for the project and taking up the ideas for communication and dissemination collected during the previous GA in Madrid.

The productive catch-up finished with a wrap-up on the work plan for the next months and with new ideas for upcoming conference participations, outreach activities and possibilities for the next project-wide meeting.