New technoeconomic analysis calculator takes guesswork out of bioprocess development

In North Carolina, DMC CTO and Co-Founder Mike Lynch launched a web-based calculator to assess the economic feasibility of products made from fermentation. The Bioprocess Technoeconomic Analysis (TEA) tool will help users – academics, startups, funding agencies, R&D team, and investors – make commercially relevant decisions about technology development and deployment. The calculator connects key process and financial metrics to production costs and financial return.

Technoeconomic analysis (TEA) provides a quantitative method to assess the difference between something that is scientifically exciting and something that is economically attractive. By linking process parameters to financial metrics, all stakeholders can better understand the factors that will determine the success of their technologies. Historically, these types of analyses have been perceived as too complex, time-consuming, or expensive to be deployed in the earliest stages of R&D planning and evaluation. One of the objectives in publishing this tool is to remove those barriers so that every stakeholder – from researcher to investor – can make informed decisions about where they spend their resources.

One of the historical challenges in the field of industrial biotechnology is a lack of understanding of what is truly important from that which is scientifically exciting. This has resulted in substantial inefficiencies in the deployment of R&D capital, potentially affecting investor confidence in the sector as a whole. By demonstrating the capabilities of early-stage TEA in this new web-based tool, DMC hopes to encourage more stakeholders to prioritize this analysis from the very beginning of their development planning.