Gimme that nitrogen.
From AgFunderNews, May 5:
Biosphere—a California-based startup developing UV-sterilized bioreactors it claims can slash biomanufacturing costs—has won a grant from the US Dept of Defense (DoD) totaling $9 million over 3.5 years to fund the development of portable bioreactors producing protein via gas fermentation.
The move reflects a strategic focus on biomanufacturing at the DoD, which is exploring distributed production across multiple scales from skid-sized units to larger facilities for food, materials, and therapeutics in “contested” environments where securing supplies via normal channels is challenging.
This initiative will culminate in a prototype capable of continuous operation with UV sterilization protocols, water and media recycling systems, and downstream processing, says the firm, which was founded in 2022 by materials scientist Brian Heligman PhD and molecular biologist Arye Lipman.
While Biosphere’s core business is providing bioreactor tech to the fermentation industry enabling firms to ditch costly and complex steam-in-place sterilization systems, it has recently acquired IP from a distressed gas fermentation company making “protein from air” that it will deploy in the DoD project, Heligman tells AgFunderNews.
“We made a strategic acquisition that we will be announcing in the near future, but our focus is on making robust hardware systems that can reliably operate in automated ways with streamlined maintenance and operations.”
UV sterilization
For aseptic production biomanufacturing, bioreactors are typically sterilized between batches using capex-intensive steam-in-place sterilization systems characterized by a vast array of pipes and valves, boilers, and a lot of water.
By killing contaminants with UV light instead, firms can reduce capex and maintenance costs, speed up the sterilization process, and develop smaller, more productive bioreactors unconstrained by steam sterilization protocols, says Heligman.
To date, Biosphere has validated the tech at benchtop-scale, advanced pilot scale clean in place systems, and is now working on a 20,000-L demo scale facility, he explains.
Gas fermentation: not for the faint-hearted
The DoD contract around gas fermentation—using gases instead of sugars as feedstocks for microbes—creates room to experiment with more exotic bioreactor designs that would be harder to fund in purely commercial settings, says Heligman.
While gas fermentation technology is best-known for making fuel and chemicals (LanzaTech, Phase Biolabs, and Again), it is also being used by several firms (Calysta, Circe, Solmeyea, Air Protein, Solar Foods, Unibio, Jooules) as a platform for food and feed production. LanzaTech is also moving into food and feed, having honed its tech for ethanol and specialty chemical production.
Using gases instead of sugars to feed microbes can lower input costs and allow for longer campaigns (because there is less risk of contamination), and potentially leverage waste or byproduct gases....
....MUCH MORE
