Catalyzing Across Sectors to Advance the Bioeconomy

Catalyzing Across Sectors to Advance the Bioeconomy (CASA-Bio) was inspired by the Executive Order (EO) on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy. Released by the White House in September of 2022, the EO laid out a grand vision to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing through foundational and use-inspired research and development in five thematic areas (Bioeconomy EO Themes): climate change, food and agriculture, supply chain resilience, human health, and cross cutting areas to advance all these areas. Moreover, the EO called for this vision to be enabled by collaboration among government, industry, the private sector, and public sector researchers. That sparked our thinking, and we initiated CASA-Bio.

CASA-Bio is a collaborative, facilitated activity involving stakeholders from federal funding agencies, industries, non-profits, and the public sector research community. The overall goal is to give life to the vision of the Bioeconomy EO by seeking synergy through collaboration in areas of mutual interest. See our Action Plan.

Thank You for Participating!

Thank you for all your input both synchronously at our four town hall meetings and asynchronously through our submission form. Here is how we will use your input. We are currently processing the data and hope to have some synthesis to share soon. Throughout April, we will be holding several Synthesis Meetings with funding agencies, NGOs, and industry representatives to identify possible priority research areas and next steps. We will share any upcoming community events here, on this website.

Town Hall Resources

Recordings

Documents

Participants

Submission Distribution

EO Bioeconomy Themes

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Climate Change Solutions Read more

Representative Subtheme Challenges:

CCS-01: Creating Value from Waste Carbon for a Circular Bioeconomy

We need to make use of all available carbon, including waste carbon resources, to meet current demands and overcome bottlenecks that prevent or slow a transition away from fossil inputs.

CCS-02: Climate-Smart Food and Agriculture

Although food and agriculture are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, both at the field level and in downstream production, food and agriculture can be used to create climate solutions.

CCS-03: Reducing CO2 and Other Harmful Gases

Biotechnology can be utilized to reduce emissions and capture gases for potential utilization.

Food and Agriculture Innovation Read more

Representative Subtheme Challenges:

FAI-01: Accelerated Breeding of Plants and Animals

Powered by AI/ML and engineering biology, revolutionary advances are needed to produce high-yield crops adapted to changing climates and livestock with greater environmental sustainability.

FAI-02: Climate Resilience and Environmental Sustainability

Plant-based agriculture needs more resilient, systems-level approaches to meet growing demands for efficient land use and production of food and bioenergy feedstocks.

FAI-03: Protecting Plants and Animals to Sustain the Planet

There is a pressing need to improve agricultural vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics to enhance food security, lower costs, and increase agricultural sustainability.

FAI-04: Biomanufacturing Alternative Proteins and Other Agriculturally-derived Bioproducts

Innovations are needed to meet growing global demands for nutritious food, new bioproducts with novel properties, and replacements for products that depend on non-renewable resources.

Supply Chain Resilience Read more

Representative Subtheme Challenges:

SCR-01: Resilient Domestic Supply Chains for Biofuels, Bioproducts, and Biochemicals

There is an urgent need for research to enhance creation of domestic supplement chains for natural sources of critical raw materials for biofuels or biologically-derived chemicals.

SCR-02: Economics and Value Chain in the Bioeconomy

Research is needed to improve sustainable economic models that integrate investment strategies and shared services, address supply-demand balance, and ensure economic viability.

Human Health Read more

Representative Subtheme Challenges:

HH-01: Vaccines and Biologics

New approaches are needed to design vaccines and biologics with features that offer broader protection, greater supply chain resilience, simpler routes of administration, and lower costs.

HH-02: Advanced Computing for Human Health

Advances in computing technologies and accessibility are needed to help integrate different types of health data for diagnosis and treatment planning, while preserving patient privacy.

HH-03: Human Nutrition

New research and infrastructure, spanning from traditional farming and food production to sustainable biotechnologies, are needed to improve human nutrition and enhanced well-being.

HH-04: Public Health Outcomes in the Bioeconomy

A more expansive view of public health is needed to ensure that biotechnology innovations broadly benefit humans, animals and plants that serve as food, and the environment.

HH-05: Cell Therapies

Both basic and applied research investments are needed to improve many aspects of cell therapy, including cell sourcing, manufacturing, reproducibility, and costs.

HH-06: Intelligent Medical Assistance/Smart Health Care

New technologies like at-home diagnostic tools and smart wearables for disease detection hold great promise, but additional research into these tools is needed to evaluate effectiveness.

Cross-Cutting Advances Read more

Representative Subtheme Challenges:

CCA-01: Workforce Development for the Bioeconomy

Meeting the growing needs of the bioeconomy across all sections will require a diverse, skilled workforce spanning fundamental science to manufacturing.

CCA-02: Foundational Discovery Driving the Bioeconomy

Continued investments in foundational science and engineering research are needed to catalyze new breakthrough tools, technologies, and innovations to fuel the bioeconomy.

CCA-03: Biomanufacturing, Bioreactors, and Scale-up

Traditional methods for engineering and manufacturing need to evolve to permit faster progression of foundational knowledge to bioproduct commercialization, e.g., lab to market.

CCA-04: Future of Advanced Bioeconomy Computing

New computational approaches are needed to integrate the vast multimodal biological datasets to enhance discovery, scalability, and sustainability of biotechnology science and engineering.

CCA-05: Data Sharing and Infrastructure

Unified and scalable data infrastructure is needed to leverage available data from multiple sources across different sectors to support application of new technologies for the bioeconomy.

CCA-06: Responsible Innovation

Biotechnology-associated research and the resulting products need to be developed proactively to ensure best practices for security, safety, equity, accessibility, and sustainability.

CCA-07: Risk Communication

To ensure societal acceptance and adoption of the products of biotechnology, there is an urgent need for effective communication of risks associated with biotechnological advancements.

CCA-08: Biosecurity in the Bioeconomy

To safeguard public health and the environment, research is needed to understand and preemptively address potential biosecurity risks in the bioeconomy.

CCA-09: Advancing Regulatory Science for Products of Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing

Regulatory science research is needed to advance development of tools, standards, and approaches that support regulatory decision-making.

*Source for Definitions: National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) Bioeconomy Lexicon