Biosyntia ApS Secures Seed Investment to Establish a Bio-based Vitamin Production Platform
(PRWEB) May 21, 2015 -- “Biosyntia is built on a unique technology platform which holds significant promise to rapidly deliver cost efficient production of fine chemicals by sustainable fermentation processes," says Søren Møller Managing Investment Director Novo Seeds.
Cell factory development is laborious and often requires interrogation of many variants in order to identify the optimal cells. Biosyntia’s cell factory development platform enables the company to benefit from ultra-high throughput screening through a process called synthetic selection.
“In essence, Biosyntia burns down the haystack rather than looking for the needle one straw at a time”, says co-founder and technology co-inventor Hans Genee.
Biosyntia first focus area is bio-based production of vitamins for the food and feed industry. The industrial production of vitamins are today mainly based on chemical synthesis and there is a clear need and consumer demand in the market for transitioning the chemically based production methods to more sustainable and cost effective processes.
“Our goal is to disrupt the vitamin market by delivering more sustainable and healthy vitamins. We are establishing a broad technology platform and focus on using this platform to achieve bio-based vitamin production” says co-founder and DTU professor Morten Sommer.
A key factor for success is to bring the production yield of bio-based processes up to levels comparable to existing chemical processes.
“In conjunction with the financing Biosyntia has entered a strategic collaboration with the Center for Biosustainability, at The Technical University of Denmark to gain access to complementary cell factory development technologies. If there are anyone in the world who can meet the challenging yield requirements in this project, it is this young and highly skilled team” says Henrik Dalbøge, Chairman of Biosyntia and former head of Chr. Hansen’s Human Health and Nutrition division.
Biosyntia is one of the region's emerging start-ups aiming to deliver sustainable and bio-based solutions based on the extensive commercial experience and strong research based in Denmark. However, in a competitive industry the outlook must be global:
“We invest worldwide and only in the companies with unique differentiators and competitive edge. We believe that Biosyntia has the potential to build a world leading synthetic biology platform and accordingly can attract international strategic partners and investors”, says Søren Carlsen, Managing Partner of Novo Ventures and Novo Seeds. Søren Møller and Søren Carlsen will join the Board of Biosyntia.
About Biosyntia:
Biosyntia is a biotech startup developing processes for biological production of vitamins by applying its synthetic biology and metabolic engineering platform. Biosyntia develops biocatalysts at an unprecedented speed and efficiency by employing our patent pending high-throughput screening technology. Biosyntia has received numerous recognitions including Top 5 innovative start-up companies in Europe (2014).
About Novo:
Novo A/S, the holding company in the Novo Group, is responsible for the management of the assets of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which are currently valued at more than DKK 300 billion.
Novo A/S is a private limited liability company fully owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Besides being the major shareholder in the Novo Group companies, Novo A/S provides seed and venture capital to development stage companies and takes significant ownership positions in well-established companies, within life science, as well as manages a broad portfolio of financial assets.
For further information visit http://www.novo.dk
Morten Sommer, Biosyntia, +45 40255470, [email protected]
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