Fraunhofer IZI-BB

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. (FhG) is a leading non-profit organisation of more than 50 institutes of applied research and development in Europe, which carry out projects on a contract basis on behalf of industry, the service sector, and government. The Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (IZI) has expertises in cellular biotechnology, nanotechnology and biomarker development, and with its Branch Bioanalytics and Bioprocesses (Fraunhofer IZI-BB) offers additional solutions in the areas of bioproduction, bioanalytics and processing techniques.

The Extremophile Research & Biobank CCCryo group studies cold-adapted snow and permafrost algae collected during own bioprospecting expeditions to Polar Regions. Its Culture Collection of Cryophilic Algae (CCCryo), founded in 1999, serves as a unique bioresource for its own research, but also for external researchers from the academic and private industrial sector world-wide. Aims of the group's applied research are the use of algal strains for production of high quality substances (fatty acids, antioxidants, ice structuring proteins) and development of product-optimised photobioreactors for high purity algal mass production for the extraction of high-value metabolites for health and cosmetics.

The Fraunhofer IZI-BB acts as a provider of well characterised algae strains. The bioresource CCCryo holds more than 360 strains (270 will be available for this project). This selection is highly diverse and represents algae from 44 genera with 75 species in 7 algal classes, from 5 phyla. Strains were collected during expeditions of the Fraunhofer Institute to Spitsbergen (Svalbard, Norway) and the Antarctic Peninsula (Antarctica). The CCCryo data are organised in a comprehensive database including detailed field/ecological data, growth requirements and preliminary information on fatty acids and other metabolites available from earlier studies.