The industrial production of β-lactam antibiotics over the past 50 years is one of the outstanding examples of biotechnology. Today, the β-lactam antibiotics, particularly penicillins and cephalosporins, represent the world’s major biotechnology products with worldwide sales of 15 billion US dollars. That is equal to about sixty-five percent of the total world market for antibiotics. Europe remains the dominant manufacturing area for both penicillins and cephalosporins. However, due to ever increasing labor, energy and raw material costs, more bulk manufacturing is moving to the Asia, with China, Korea and India becoming major production countries.
In this context, together with the environmental concern of China government, the enzyme technology in β-lactam antibiotics industry is currently in great demand in mainland of China. Funding and investment are now available from government and involved companies.

The mission of our research is to develop cost effective enzymatic process. Our lab has been engaged in enzyme engineering research for years. a pipeline has been well established for biocatalyst development. It consists of screening, expression, purification and immobilization techniques. Sometimes biocatalysts need further engineering to meet the requirement of biotransformation.