New Wave Biotech and iMEAN have partnered to offer biomanufacturers a pioneering combined solution for end-to-end bioprocess optimisation, combining New Wave’s downstream process, TEA and LCA modelling capabilities with iMEAN’s strain design and upstream process modelling expertise.
The EU Biotech Act, US BIOSECURE Act and China’s Five-Year Plan are all accelerating demand for sovereign biomanufacturing capacity. Meanwhile, Digital twins and AI-driven modelling are attracting major investment in biomanufacturing (Boehringer Ingelheim, Merckut). However, most initiatives focus on either upstream or downstream in isolation. This is because upstream and downstream development operate in silos in the bioprocessing industry.
Strain engineers optimise organisms without visibility into purification constraints, while process developers design downstream workflows without understanding the upstream choices driving their feed streams. The result is costly rework, unexpected bottlenecks at scale, and R&D timelines that routinely stretch to 3–10 years with failure rates above 75%. The gap between the two – where organism design decisions cascade into purification complexity, cost, and sustainability outcomes – is where many bioprocesses fail at scale.
The New Wave Biotech–iMEAN partnership directly addresses this problem by enabling biomanufacturers to accurately predict outcomes before committing to expensive failures. iMEAN brings advanced genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction and upstream bioprocess simulation, combining mechanistic modelling with machine learning approaches. New Wave Biotech contributes hybrid AI modelling, integrating mechanistic and machine learning approaches, for downstream process optimisation, alongside its proprietary TEA and LCA methodology built specifically for biotech processes. Connected, they enable customers to digitally screen, simulate, and optimise entire bioprocesses to understand how upstream decisions affect downstream viability before committing to expensive wet lab experiments.
What the Joint Proposition Delivers
- Anticipate downstream consequences of upstream choices before committing
- Optimise across the whole process, not just within each half
- Integrate cost and sustainability analysis from day one.
Leadership Commentary
“Bioprocessing has an expensive disconnect. Companies spend months optimising a strain, hand it to the downstream team, and then discover it’s a nightmare to purify. By then, the most expensive decisions have already been made. We built New Wave Biotech to enable smarter downstream optimisation. Partnering with iMEAN means customers can now see their downstream options upfront, and optimise the full end-to-end process together.”
Zoe Yu Tung Law, CEO and Co-Founder, New Wave Biotech
“Metabolic modelling tells you how to design a better organism and optimise the bioprocess, but it doesn’t tell you whether beyond this milestone that bioprocess leads to an economic process at scale. Finally, partnering with New Wave Biotech is a natural extension of our mission at iMEAN, to deliver high-quality, end-to-end services that accelerate and de-risk our customer’s R&D. Together, we enable companies to visualise the full picture from day one.”
Rémi Peyraud, CEO, iMEAN
About New Wave Biotech
New Wave Biotech helps biomanufacturing companies make better process decisions. Its platform, Bioprocess Foresight, combines mechanistic modelling with machine learning to optimise downstream bioprocessing, integrated with techno-economic analysis (TEA) and the industry’s first life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology built specifically for biotech processes — so teams can see the performance, cost, and sustainability impact of their process choices before committing to expensive experiments. New Wave Biotech works with organisations across food ingredients, industrial biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals.
New Wave Biotech has delivered measurable outcomes across multiple client engagements in industrial biotechnology, including up to 8.6x improvement in product recovery, 55% reduction in unit costs, and 92% fewer experiments required to reach optimised process conditions. Working with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), the platform achieved prediction accuracy of 1.4x–4x better than industry averages using data from a single experimental run.
Founded in 2022, the company is based in London.
About iMEAN
iMEAN specialises in metabolic modelling and upstream bioprocess optimisation. Using advanced genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction and kinetic pathway modelling, iMEAN helps biomanufacturers design optimised organisms and fermentation processes, reducing R&D timelines and costs. The company works with customers across biobased chemicals, food innovation, and industrial biotechnology.
iMEAN has achieved a 2.8x titer increase and over €600,000 in R&D savings for clients in biobased chemicals production, with results delivered in six months that would typically require years of iterative experimentation. The company has also built genomic databases of 1,000+ food-grade strains for a major food innovation partner.
iMEAN is based in Toulouse, France.
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