Leibniz-HKI spin-off extracting new valuable materials from industrial waste

In Germany, the latest spin-off from Leibniz-HKI, biotech startup Biophelion, is working on extracting new valuable materials from industrial waste.

The new startup wants to accelerate the transition to a circular economy in industry. Biotechnological processes are to be used to bring more sustainability to the material-intensive chemical industry, which has caused massive environmental problems in the past. The two founders, Lars Regestein and Till Tiso, have an unusual helper at their side: a yeast-like black fungus. The two engineers want to use it to convert mixtures of substances that were previously considered worthless by-products or even waste into usable compounds. To do this, they are taking advantage of the enormous variability in the fungus’s metabolism. This enables the microorganism to convert carbon-containing mixtures of substances from industrial (waste) streams, such as those produced in large quantities in bioethanol production or during the manufacturing of sugar and paper, into new products. As a result, the carbon contained in these substances does not end up in the atmosphere as climate-damaging carbon dioxide, as was previously the case, but is returned to human use.