BioE Graduate Seminars

Event Introduction

Spiber’s Brewed Protein: Expanding the Range of Sustainable Materials

Abstract

David Lips moved from the Netherlands to Japan in 2017 to join Spiber – a Japanese biomaterials company that is developing new materials for mainstay industrial and consumer use based on recombinant protein biomaterials. Spiber launched the Moon Parka with North Face Japan and is now scaling up to mass production of its Brewed Protein materials.

Its first commercial scale fermentation facility in Thailand is scheduled to begin commercial operation in 2021, with an annual capacity of several hundred tonnes. Other preparations are underway for additional scale-up initiatives aimed at further reducing environmental burden and production costs. In his talk, Lips will give a sweeping overview of Brewed Protein materials and their potential, as well as Spiber’s wide-ranging approach to biomanufacturing.

About the speaker

Originally hailing from the Netherlands, Lips started his journey in engineering biology through the iGEM competition in 2015. Inspired by the promise of synthetic biology to contribute to some of humanity’s most daunting challenges, Lips joined Pamela Silver’s lab at the Harvard Medical School. Here, he worked on synthetic microbial consortia and engineered probiotics for diagnostic applications in the human gut.

After finishing his master’s degree, Lips moved to Japan and joined Spiber in 2017, where he has worked on projects ranging from the molecular design of new protein materials to the optimization of protein expression yields through metabolic engineering and gene design. Currently in Spiber’s Frontier Development team, David Lips is responsible for exploring and prototyping novel applications of Spiber’s technology.