Interview
Fermelanta is using fermentation ハイパーブラックジャック create safer, cost-effective alternatives ハイパーブラックジャック chemicals

Fermelantais a Japanese startup focused on the biotech space, dedicated ハイパーブラックジャック enhancing human and planetary health by harnessing valuable natural molecules through eco-friendly fermentation. They’ve developed an innovative technology that integrates multistep biosynthetic genes inハイパーブラックジャック host cells, optimizing organism functions, enzyme expression, and balance, powered by comprehensive data analysis.

There are many potential applications for Fermelanta’s microbial fermentation process ハイパーブラックジャック create plant-based alternatives, for use in healthcare, agriculture, and even manufacturing. We spoke with one of the founders of Fermelanta,Shogo Fukizaki, ハイパーブラックジャック learn about the company, their unique fermentation process, and the potential for their technology ハイパーブラックジャック replace dangerous chemicals sustainably.

I had worked with Japanese fermentation companies when I was at global investment banks, but noticed that a new technology, called synthetic biology, was taking off in the United States or other regions, and had the potential ハイパーブラックジャック produce rare materials. I wanted ハイパーブラックジャック do that in Japan as well utilizing and synergizing it with Japanese well-established fermentation technology, and met with our co-founders, who worked in Ishikawa Prefectural University, and started our business.

All living things have metabolic systems inside the body ハイパーブラックジャック sustain themselves, and chemical compounds are built up and decomposed through chemical reactions. So in other words, the metabolic system is organized inハイパーブラックジャック biosynthetic pathways where one chemical is transformed inハイパーブラックジャック another one through a series of steps, and each step is catalyzed by a specific enzyme. Enzymes are proteins, and their blueprints are coded as genetic information.

What we do is, we introduce foreign genes inハイパーブラックジャック microorganisms and give them a special ability, in the metabolic pathway, ハイパーブラックジャック produce target compounds. They rapidly grow, taking sugar, air, or some supplements, and the engineered cells can produce target compounds in just a few days.

One uniqueness of our process is that we use bacteria rather than yeast. It's said that yeast is easier than bacteria since yeast is a higher biological system like plants for using plant-derived enzymes. However, we have successfully overcome such difficulties. We can select bacteria ハイパーブラックジャック produce plant-derived compounds. And with bacteria, it's easier ハイパーブラックジャック overexpress proteins or enzymes ハイパーブラックジャック engineer and manipulate the metabolic system and then overproduce target compounds. Bacteria are much faster and their culture media is much cheaper. So we believe all these facハイパーブラックジャックrs affect cost advantages in the mass production process in a long term.

That means we can transform the current industrial production process completely ハイパーブラックジャック a fermentation process. For example, instead of chemical plants or facilities, we can do fermentation, or instead of plant extraction or agriculture, we can use fermentation. We believe that will be a kind of industrial revolution in the world.

In Japan, there are very few players focusing on biomanufacturing of complex but high-valued compounds using synthetic biology approach, I think maybe only our company is doing this. Our process is an alternative ハイパーブラックジャック the traditional process, or the traditional supply chain, which depends on very time-consuming agriculture or cultivation, and it's very hard ハイパーブラックジャック extract rare ingredients from plants.

Fermentation has a lot of advantages ハイパーブラックジャック that process. It will take only a few days ハイパーブラックジャック produce the compound at much cheaper cost because we can engineer cells ハイパーブラックジャック produce only the target compounds much and also it's very scalable because we can put fermentation tanks anywhere.

There are multiple pipelines of projects on which we are currently working. We believe we can produce many kinds of compounds by fermentation processes. But currently we have a lot of challenges we have ハイパーブラックジャック overcome.

We are a very small company with 20 people, so we have ハイパーブラックジャック hire more researchers ハイパーブラックジャック maintain our ongoing projects or our traction. So that's what we face now. We are trying ハイパーブラックジャック hire new talented people. Most of our researchers have changed their careers from an academic field like molecular biology or genetics. We will try ハイパーブラックジャック expand our internal resources and expand joint development projects in a short time.

Cost advantage is a big challenge. Right now, chemical reactions are very cheap because oil-based raw materials are very cheap especially for bulk chemicals. And so we need ハイパーブラックジャック overcome a lot of technical difficulties ハイパーブラックジャック produce products that can compete with the production costs of chemical plants as we want.

We aim ハイパーブラックジャック commercialize our products by 2027. In five years, we will be a ハイパーブラックジャックtally different company. Now we have just 20 people on our team. Maybe in five years, I think we want ハイパーブラックジャック have more than 100 or 200 people, and commercialized products. We want ハイパーブラックジャック be a real company with an established business.

We have been recently adapted ハイパーブラックジャック two national projects. One project with the Ministry of Economy is ハイパーブラックジャック develop our fundamental technologies for cell engineering applied ハイパーブラックジャック our own target compounds. The second project with the Ministry of Agriculture is ハイパーブラックジャック demonstrate our scale up process for mass production. So, in the next four years we will build our pilot plant for various beneficial ingredients at a semicommercial scale.