Track 3 Session Details
AFCC Conference Breakout Sessions
Breakout Sessions are 90 minutes, each one has one moderator with a maximum of four to five speakerss.
Breakout sessions will be focused on the following five subject areas:
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Track 2: Sustainable Feedstocks and Biofuels, Products Driving Decarbonization
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Track 3: Renewable Specialty Chemicals
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Track 4: Synthetic Biology, Alternative Proteins, Regenerative Agriculture, Food & Fiber
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Track 5: Building the Biobased Economy Supply Chain
Track 3 Breakout Session Details​
Renewable Specialty Chemicals
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This Track is Sponsored by:
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Monday, November 17, 2025
​Session 1: 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM: New Horizons in Industrial Biotechnology - from Feedstocks to Products
Moderator: Jim Barber, Barber Advisors LLC
Speakers:
Praveen Paripati
CEO
SuGanit
TBD
This panel will feature earlier stage companies from across the spectrum of industrial biotechnology, including feedstocks, chemical and material products, and biologically active products.
Session 2: 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM: High Value Low Volume Renewable Chemicals
Moderator: David Dodds, CTO, SynAppBio, Inc.
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​For over 25 years, conversations using the words renewable or green have concerned to biofuels, to the nearly complete exclusion of bio-based, renewable chemicals. This is understandable as about 75% of all petroleum produced or imported in the United States is used for fuel, while somewhere between 5% to 8% is used to produce chemicals. Yet the chemicals industry is responsible for as much as 20% of fossil CO2 emissions. While these are largely Scope 1 & 2 emissions, the end-of-life emissions from non-fuel chemicals require that renewable chemicals be given the same status and recognition as renewable fuels. The lower volume of chemicals and materials relative to fuels means non-fuel chemicals are not as visible in discussions about oil prices or climate change, and so have escaped much of the public’s attention. Can we produce chemicals and materials that offer a low carbon intensity score by using alternatives to fossil fuels as feedstock? The answer is: Absolutely yes, and we will discuss how some of these companies are progressing. Join this diverse panel of thought leaders in Renewable Chemicals and delivering ideas and solutions to supply value added chemicals.
Session 3: 1:30 PM to 3 PM: Advancing the Bioeconomy by Identifying Practical Regulatory Policies
Moderator: Martha Marrapese, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP
Speakers:
Senior Policy Advisor, Agriculture
National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB)
The panelists will leverage the recently announced report, Charting the Future of Biotechnology, introduced by Congress in April, 2025, which lays out 49 recommendations in accelerating biotechnology innovation and scaling the U.S. biomanufacturing, and emphasizing national security and economic competitiveness. Several of these policies are currently being worked on by Congress and federal agencies. This panel of experts will emphasize the importance of relevant regulatory policies which would streamline adoption, remove redundant regulatory practices, mitigate cost, and increase the speed of implementation.
Session 4: 3:30 PM to 5 PM: Best Practices for Gaining Regulatory Approval for New Products
Moderator: Steve Evans, Senior Technical Fellow, BioMADE
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Speakers:
This session will help companies at various stages learn best practices for gaining regulatory approval for various food, building block chemicals, and cosmetic products. The panel will feature insights from companies with products spanning multiple use categories, moderated by a longtime industry expert from BioMADE. Origin Materials has worked through EPA approval processes for a building block chemical. Curie Co. will discuss the differences between FDA and EPA jurisdiction for cosmetic, food, and household ingredients and preservatives. LanzaTech will share learnings from their experience navigating the regulatory space to bring LanzaTechTM Nutritional Protein to market. Edge Solutions will provide tips to help navigate U.S. regulatory agency consultation and facilitate commercialization. Geltor will discuss beauty and personal care and highlight PrimaColl® nutritional collagen, which received a no questions letter from the FDA. Learn about their process, pitfalls to avoid, and other insights. Attendees will leave with a better understanding of the path they need to take to gain needed approvals and be inspired about the promise for more biomanufactured products to hit the shelves soon.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
​Session 5: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM: Activities In Scaling Up Renewable Chemicals
Moderator: John Nicols, CEO, Organicols
Speakers:
The transition of promising technologies for the production of renewable chemicals from a laboratory scale to commercial scale is often difficult and expensive. As a result the timeframe estimated for commercialization is typically underestimated resulting in much slower penetration of these promising new methods and products into the chemical industries. The theme of ‘sugar is the next oil’ connects biological, chemical, and thermochemical conversions of renewable feedstocks to products that are drop-in replacements for petroleum derived chemicals or are new to market chemicals/materials. The latter typically offer a functionality advantage and can command higher prices that result in less severe scale-up challenges. However, for drop-in replacements, price is of paramount importance and competitive capital, and operating expenditures are a prerequisite for success. Hence, scale-up of relevant technologies must be interfaced with effective and efficient management of both cell and steel factories. In addition, biotech data and analytics with AI becomes an important factor for consideration. Details involved in all aspects of manufacturing, such as utilities, sterility, product recovery and purification, regulatory requirements, and emissions must be managed successfully. The leaders in this panel will provide their scale-up activities from feedstock to potential consumer products and management of biotech data with AI.
Joaquin Alarcon, CEO, Catalyxx Inc.
Petrochemicals - Without the Petro
When we think of our global dependence on petroleum, we tend to think about fuels, powering our cars, planes, boats, etc. Yet 12% of the global oil demand is driven by petrochemicals. By 2030, petrochemicals will drive a third of the growth in demand for oil, and by 2050, nearly half, becoming a more important driver than trucks, aviation and shipping. Chemicals and petrochemicals make up 6.1% of global emissions, similar to iron and steel and nearly double cement emissions. And as demand for petrochemicals rise, emissions are forecast to increase 10-20%. The good news is, there’s a better way. We can take the process the chemical industry has relied on and scaled very successfully for decades -- catalysis – and use it with sustainable, bio-based ethanol to produce carbon negative, drop-in chemicals. The process is agnostic to ethanol source – the ethanol can be found across almost all geographies, and made from a variety of sources (1G, 2G, and 3G) - and the end products can be used in a wide variety of use cases, including coatings, paints, resins, solvents, cosmetics, personal care products, plasticizers and more. Catalysis with bio-feedstocks is the key to decarbonizing huge sectors of the chemical industry, and the technology has been validated by global chemical companies and is ready for commercial deployment. Our first-of-a-kind, commercial scale, green chemicals plant will begin construction in Q1 2026 in France, with other geographies to follow. References: https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-petrochemicals https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-petrochemicals https://zerocarbon-analytics.org/archives/energy/overview-of-the-global-petrochemical-industry
​Session 6: 3:30 PM to 5 PM: Revolutionizing Bioproducts: New Scalable Technologies for Food and Industrial Bioproducts
Moderator: David Demirjian, President & CEO, Midwest Bioprocessing Center
Speakers:
The bioproducts landscape is rapidly evolving, driven by the growing demand for sustainable, economically viable alternatives to petroleum-derived materials across food, agriculture, personal care, and industrial markets. This session will explore groundbreaking advances in scalable manufacturing technologies that are transforming how food-grade and other high-value bioproducts are developed, produced, and commercialized. From novel reactor designs and process intensification strategies to next-generation enzymatic, GRAS-compliant microbial, chemical, and hybrid production systems, the session will highlight several innovations that enable efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally responsible scale-up. These emerging technologies are paving the way for broader adoption of biobased solutions—enhancing supply chain resilience, reducing carbon intensity, and creating new value streams across multiple sectors.
Rajni Aneja, Managing Director, Cornell Institute for Food Systems -Industry Partnership Program
Bridging Academic Research and Industry: Innovation, Sustainability, and Partnership the New Bioeconomy
Producing protein and complementary nutrients through synthetic biology approaches offers a promising path to feed a growing global population while strengthening food supply chains, conserving natural resources, and advancing a sustainable bioeconomy. A new chapter in food system innovation—driven by advances in synthetic biology—is unfolding in academic research. However, scaling these biobased solutions to meet commercial demands will require new models of academic–industry collaboration and practical strategies to overcome shared challenges.
William Armiger, Ph.D., PE, President, BioChem Insights
Electrification of Biocatalysis: Electrochemical NADH Regeneration for High-Titer Sustainable Chemical Manufacturing
We are developing a general Electrochemical Bioreactor (EBR) platform for electricity-powered, fully cell-free enzymatic manufacturing of reduced chemicals. This platform directly addresses two of the most persistent barriers to broad industrial use of enzymatic biocatalysis: scalable cofactor regeneration/recovery and enzyme stability during continuous operation. Many valuable chemicals could be produced via biocatalysis if cost-effective NADH regeneration and long enzyme lifetimes were achievable. Existing approaches rely on sacrificial chemical substrates, hydrogen gas, or living cell fermentation—all of which impose safety, cost, or scalability constraints. Our innovation integrates several key breakthroughs: Electrochemical Cofactor Regeneration/Recovery via COâ‚‚-to-Formate Shuttle, Overcoming, Cofactor Recovery via Renalase, Maximizing Enzyme longevity, turnover and kinetics via enzyme engineering methods. This demonstration establishes the platform's readiness for broad application to diverse NADH-dependent reductions in pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, vitamins, and sustainable materials. Ultimately, this platform represents a new paradigm for electrified biomanufacturing — merging renewable electricity, synthetic biology, AI-enabled enzyme design, and electrochemical engineering to decarbonize and intensify chemical production across multiple industries. The work is being carried out in partnership with other organizations including Midwest Bioprocessing Center (MBC) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Tom Beardslee, COO, Biogrammatics Inc.
The Pichia Gold™ System for Rapid High-Copy GRAS Strain Generation
Production of heterologous proteins for introduction into human food products requires government regulatory approval. The approval process is simplified if the production strain has already been judged to be “Generally Regarded As Safe” (GRAS). BioGrammatics’ Komagataella phaffii (Pichia) strains have public GRAS approval filings from Impossible® Foods and the EVERY® Company for proteins being produced for human consumption. The generation of these strains required extensive genomic editing to remove all non-K. phaffii elements for final production. BioGrammatics has now generated strains we market under the Pichia Gold™ brand that contain only K. phaffii elements (other than the heterologous protein being expressed) that simplify the GRAS certification process. The Pichia Gold system is based on haploid Ade-, Ura- K. phaffii strains. The dual auxotrophies allow the introduction of multiple open reading frames in one transformation through random genomic integration. Multi-copy integration of expression cassettes for a target protein can increase expression over single copy strains, however the optimal number of copies is protein dependent necessitating testing a range of copy numbers. Some target proteins benefit from the co-expression of chaperones that assist in protein secretion. Some targets are protein complexes (e.g., antibodies) that require expression of multiple genes. The Pichia Gold system enables all these situations via rapid generation of clones with a range of copy numbers all without the use of antibiotic markers. Examples of the system in action with multiple targets will be presented.
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Gabriella Dweck, Founder Co-CEO, Oleo
Advancing Bioproducts: Coupling Microwave Hydrolysis and Fermentation for Low-Cost Lipid Production
This presentation introduces a scalable biomanufacturing platform designed to convert biomass waste into oil feedstocks for advanced fuel production. The platform employs microwave-assisted hydrolysis to efficiently break down lignocellulosic materials into fermentable sugars, followed by microbial fermentation to convert those sugars into lipids. These microbial oils can be refined into renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel, or customized for industrial applications such as lubricants and specialty chemicals. Demonstrated at lab scale with over 30 different biomass feedstocks, this feedstock-flexible system shows strong potential to produce oils at cost parity with conventional seed oils. By integrating innovative reactor design with microbial innovation, the process lowers input costs, expands feedstock optionality, and enables the scalable, sustainable production of next-generation bioproducts.