Japan’s Yokogawa acquires Insilicoto to build bioprocess solutions

Japan-based Yokogawa Electric Corporation has acquired all shares of Insilico Biotechnology AG, a Germany-based developer and provider of bioprocess software and services.

Fostering the development of the bioeconomy is one of the priority issues within Yokogawa’s sustainability goals, and in line with that the company aims to leverage this acquisition to build total bioprocess solutions that support biopharmaceutical development through to manufacturing. Insilico’s digital twin technology uses an advanced hybrid model formed from a mechanistic model of the unique characteristics of an intracellular metabolic network and a data-driven model constructed from process data using the machine learning process. As well as drastically accelerating what until now has been a multipleyear development process, prediction and simulation also enable the acquisition of a deep understanding of the metabolism process. And given that this solution enables the construction of metabolism models for bacteria and many other kinds of cellular organisms, it can also be used in a wide variety of applications related to foods, chemicals, and other products that utilise biotechnology.