Tanda Biotech: Revolutionizing Bioproduction for a Sustainable Future

Tanda Biotech is a participant in cohort 2 of Resurgence, a cleantech accelerator led by the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in partnership with the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

The founding team at Tanda Biotech has spent over a decade developing advanced filtration technologies for biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Their previous work played a pivotal role in delivering purification solutions for Covid-19 mRNA vaccine production. Building on this expertise, Tanda Biotech aims to address significant challenges in large-scale bioproduction.

“Large-scale bioproduction is crucial to the development of the bioeconomy, which is vital for sustainability,” said Tanda Biotech Founder Yingqing Huang. The “bioeconomy” refers to the use of biological resources to create products, services, and processes in a sustainable economic system. It includes the production of bio-based products, bioenergy, and bio-based food and animal feed.

“However, current technologies lack scalability, are overly expensive, and produce significant plastic waste, thus hindering the full potential of bioeconomies,” Huang added.

To tackle these issues, Tanda Biotech has developed modular filtration equipment and reusable filters with innovative flow channel designs. This approach reduces capital and operational costs by 50% and cuts plastic waste while offering 20 times more filtration capacity.

The company’s solutions have been well-received by industry stakeholders. “Many companies that use biotechnologies to produce commodity products encounter significant obstacles in scaling up their manufacturing processes efficiently,” Huang noted. “Our solution offers a viable way to overcome these barriers, enabling better scalability for production.”

Tanda Biotech has a clear roadmap for scaling its technology. The company plans to begin lab-scale production in 2025, expand to pilot-scale solutions by 2026, and launch fully automated large-scale solutions by 2027.

The company is currently working on customer validation, and their current objective is to establish themselves as a market leader within 5-7 years.

Participation in the Resurgence cleantech accelerator provides Tanda Biotech with an opportunity to refine its business strategies, build company culture, and prepare for fundraising.

“We have established valuable intellectual properties and a capable technical team, but we need support and coaching to build a strong foundation for company growth,” Huang said. “This includes setting up effective business strategies, evolving company culture, preparing for fundraising, and more.”

Through innovation and collaboration, Tanda Biotech is poised to redefine bioproduction, creating scalable and sustainable solutions for a thriving bioeconomy.

// Resurgence provides full-spectrum support for its cleantech startups focused on four specific areas of the cleantech industry: energy storage and infrastructure, next-generation nuclear solutions, hydrogen and alternative fuels, and materials refinement and process intensification.