New Wave Biotech and iMEAN have partnered to offer an end-to-end bioprocess optimization platform that connects upstream and downstream manufacturing for the first time.
The collaboration addresses a costly problem in biomanufacturing. Strain engineers typically optimize organisms without understanding purification constraints, while process developers design downstream workflows without knowing how upstream choices affect their work. This disconnect leads to expensive rework and unexpected bottlenecks at scale.
iMEAN brings genome-scale metabolic modeling and upstream bioprocess simulation. New Wave Biotech contributes AI modeling for downstream process optimization plus cost and sustainability analysis. Together, they let manufacturers digitally screen and optimize entire bioprocesses before running wet lab experiments.
The approach has delivered results including 8.6x yield improvements and 92 percent fewer experiments in previous applications.
“Companies spend months optimizing a strain, hand it to the downstream team, and then discover it’s a nightmare to purify,” said Zoe Yu Tung Law, CEO and Co-Founder of New Wave Biotech. “Partnering with iMEAN means customers can now see their downstream options upfront and optimize the full end-to-end process together.”
A common scenario both companies encounter: a high-performing strain that works well upstream but creates complex impurity mixtures downstream, making purification impractical at scale. An integrated model flags this early, before months of lab work get wasted.
“Metabolic modelling tells you how to design a better organism, but it doesn’t tell you whether that bioprocess leads to an economic process at scale,” said Rémi Peyraud, CEO of iMEAN. “Together, we enable companies to visualize the full picture from day one.”
The gap between upstream and downstream is where many bioprocesses fail at scale. R&D timelines routinely stretch to three to ten years with failure rates above 75 percent in the industry.
The solution is available now for biomanufacturers across food ingredients, industrial biotechnology, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Both companies have delivered validated commercial results, a distinction in a field where many AI claims remain at proof-of-concept stage.
The partnership comes as the EU Biotech Act, US BIOSECURE Act and China’s Five-Year Plan accelerate demand for domestic biomanufacturing capacity.
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