From Mould to Market
How Biophelion is turning common fungus into new chemicals
Your Challenge:
Circular Biomanufacturing
Until now, our manufacturing processes have almost entirely been based on the use of newly, mined raw materials with not enough coming from the recycling of waste streams. This places an enormous burden on the environment and our society. In addition, dependencies remain in global supply chains that could be reduced through access to local materials.
Instead, we can create a circular economy in which new products are manufactured locally, using valorized waste streams as a source for raw materials, to build more sustainable and resilient production platforms.
To achieve this, biomanufacturing processes must be developed to market maturity and directly integrated with modern production processes. Scientific advances in recent years have produced new findings and methods that can significantly increase the performance of biomanufacturing processes and open up new application possibilities. Although alternative ways of producing a wide range of products to replace the conventional petrochemical or chemical manufacturing processes have gone to market, breakthroughs have so far only been achieved in niche applications. We need to reach the goal where the majority of bulk products are made through biomanufacturing processes that enable the use of locally available raw materials.
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The challenge: to develop an end-to-end prototype that processes various carbonaceous waste streams into new products as a continuous bioproduction process.
The prototype must demonstrate how carbonaceous waste streams can be processed and fed to microbes as food. The overall bioproduction process shall not use E. Coli or Saccharomyces cerevisiae and shall demonstrate continuous production over a period of at least 180 days during the Challenge. At the end of the process, at least three different products should be produced using a modern manufacturing process, such as additive manufacturing.
The Challenge runs over a three-year period. A panel of globally recognized experts will assist SPRIND in evaluating the applications and select up to eight teams to participate. During the Challenge period, teams further develop their bioproduction technology to achieve the Challenge goal.
Teams participating in this Challenge are fully challenged. SPRIND therefore provides intensive and individual support. This includes funding the teams with up to €1.5 million in Stage 1 of the Challenge, which started in November 2023. In order to unleash the full potential, SPRIND also provides a coach to accompany each team's work, advise them and network them. After one year and after two years, the jury reconvenes in each case to evaluate the interim status and decide which approaches have the greatest breakthrough innovation potential and which teams can prove themselves in the Challenge until the end.
In October 2024, the expert jury, on behalf of SPRIND, selected the participants for the second phase of the Circular Biomanufacturing
Challenge. Over the next 12 months, the six teams will each receive up to 2 million euros to further develop their technology. The teams will also be supported by SPRIND, advised, and connected with additional experts and coaches. After one year, the jury will assess the progress of the developments and decide which teams will advance to the third stage of the Challenge.
The Teams
Science Youtuber Jacob Beautemps introduces the Challenge teams at Breaking Lab
Do you have further questions?
Please feel free to contact us at challenge@sprind.org.
More about this topic
More Challenges and Funken
Unwelcome in the bathroom and on wallpaper at home, it has been a star in laboratories for decades: the mould Aureobasidium pullulans. The yeast-like fungus thrives almost everywhere, eats many things and excretes different molecules. It was these properties that attracted the interest of Professor Till Tiso. The microbiologist was sure that the fungus could do more:
When the SPRIND Circular Biomanufacturing Challenge was announced, Till Tiso approached a former colleague with his fungus – Dr Lars Regestein from the Bio Pilot Plant in Jena. The process engineer recalls:
One of our core competences at the Institute of Applied Microbiology at RWTH Aachen University is the genetic engineering of microorganisms so that they produce better and more targeted compounds.
When the SPRIND Circular Biomanufacturing Challenge was announced, Till Tiso approached a former colleague with his fungus – Dr Lars Regestein from the Bio Pilot Plant in Jena. The process engineer recalls:
I realised that there was a lot of potential. Back then, we weren’t even thinking about starting a company.The two had a plan: the fungus would convert various industrial by-products into usable chemicals. Specifically, Aureobasidium pullulans produces a polyester, the polymer pullulan, and a surfactant molecule from waste.
SPRIND has put us in the fast lane, bypassing normal start-up hurdles, it's almost unfair – in the best way.
Despite the hurdles, the two founders are excited about the upcoming launch.
Lars Regestein has advised many start-ups at the Bio Pilot Plant:
There is often a gap between academic research and industrial implementation. I have often seen research projects come to an end and then you just look for a new topic,says Till Tiso.
But this time it is different. Here we can make the leap from academic research to industrial implementation ourselves. That's what motivates me the most.
Lars Regestein has advised many start-ups at the Bio Pilot Plant:
I usually stand on the sidelines and tell others what to do. Now Till and I are entering the field ourselves.As CEO of Biophelion, he plans to spend all his time at the company in Jena, while Till Tiso, as CTO of the company, will also devote his time to his new professorship for Systems Biotechnology in Bielefeld.
In the future, the polyester could be used to make plastics for packaging – an obvious application. The edible polymer pullulan is already used in the food industry, for example as a gelatine substitute. But Lars Regestein and Till Tiso have something more innovative in mind: a new material for UV 3D printers. However, pullulan can't be fed directly into a 3D printer.
Identifying which final products can actually be made from the intermediate products and which customers might be interested is one of two major challenges for the two researchers. The other? Setting up the new company.
You have to modify it to make it printable,Till Tiso explains, adding mysteriously:
It's proprietary knowledge that nobody else has, so nobody can copy it.Another secret: the surfactant molecule. It is a commercially completely new and unique molecule. The team will not reveal its properties – partly because they are still researching them themselves.
Identifying which final products can actually be made from the intermediate products and which customers might be interested is one of two major challenges for the two researchers. The other? Setting up the new company.
When the Challenge began, neither scientist envisioned founding a company. Yet today, they are in the process of setting up their own company, ‘Biophelion’. They owe this step to SPRIND.
Both RWTH Aachen and the Leibniz-HKI are supportive and plan to be part of the young company, which will be a Leibniz-RWTH spin-off. Still, the spin-off is not easy.
With SPRIND backing us, the foundation has taken on a completely different reality,explains Lars Regestein. It is important for him to emphasise that he is not just talking about SPRIND's financial support.
SPRIND has put us in the fast lane, bypassing normal start-up hurdles, it's almost unfair – in the best way.
Both RWTH Aachen and the Leibniz-HKI are supportive and plan to be part of the young company, which will be a Leibniz-RWTH spin-off. Still, the spin-off is not easy.
License conditions, milestone payments, upfront... Till and I are 100% scientists and now we're dealing with a whole new vocabulary and things that are way outside our comfort zone,explains Lars Regestein.
We are just trying to climb the learning curve as quick as possible.
The two make up for the physical distance with frequent phone calls.
We feel as if we are on the phone every half hour. We also don't say goodbye anymore, but always see you later,says Till Tiso, describing the close contact between the two. Till Tiso likes his colleague and friend's hands-on, solution-oriented and direct nature. Lars Regestein, on the other hand, appreciates Till Tiso's more thoughtful approach:
He's much calmer and more balanced than I am.This means that the two complement each other well. Lars Regestein explains:
Till, for example, always says, ‘Yes, okay, now you ‘ve come up with ten weird ideas again, let's cut eight of them and then see what the other two are worth.’
A look into the future: Printed bioreactors?
One of these ideas has resulted in a project of its own.
Currently, bioreactors are designed to meet the needs of as many areas of red, green and white biotechnology as possible. For the SPRIND Challenge and our company, however, we need something completely different. That's why one of our side projects is to design and prototype bioreactors for the circular bioeconomy,explains Lars Regestein. It is still a long way off, but one of their ideas is to simply 3D-print the bioreactors themselves. As a result, the mould would live in a reactor whose raw material it has produced itself. A cycle within the cycle.
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