Companies in the food and health sector continually launch novel, healthier, and more affordable products, driven by consumer demand. This innovation often relies on engineering microbial cells (e.g., bacteria or yeast) that either produce these compounds directly or accelerate key steps in production. The microbial products market is expected to reach $346.3 billion by 2027. High‑throughput screening (HTS) remains a major bottleneck in microbial strain development: current workflows are manual, poorly automated, and lack scalable, data‑rich environments. Existing tools cannot keep pace with rapidly expanding metabolic libraries containing millions of variants, slowing progress from research to industrial deployment. DropletFactory addresses this by developing droplet‑based HTS platforms available via service (CORE) or licensing (MOBILE), enabling local and international companies to innovate faster and bring new food and health products to market.
The importance of antimicrobial membranes has significantly grown during the recent COVID pandemic era. Nanofibrous antimicrobial membranes have seen novel applications in biomedicine, such as face masks against viral threats or wound dressings used in chronic patient care. Composite electrospun nanofiber meshes are convenient to use as antimicrobial membranes. At present, the lack of automated, inline quality control limits both the pilot and large scale production of multi-material multilayer composite membranes. The alternative, manual re-calibration greatly limits production throughput and thus commercial viability. The goal of this R&D activity is to create technology for scalable inline quality control of electrospun nanofiber meshes. Using cognitive electronics, the system will be capable of continuous multiparameter monitoring and electrospinning process control to maintain optimal product quality and distribution.