Kalion receives grant to develop fermentation process for biobased glucaric acid production

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Type of post: NEWS. 

Kalion Inc., a Massachusetts-based bioengineering company, has been awarded a grant to conduct research and development work improving the biobased production of glucaric acid. Glucaric acid and its related compounds enhance the performance and the sustainability of a wide range of applications. 

Figure 1. Kalion is working on a fermentation process that transforms glucose to glucaric acid in five steps. The novel biosynthetic pathway, expressed in E. coli, consists of three enzymes (in blue) from disparate organisms: yeast, mice, and bacteria. Taken from “Catalyzing Commercialization: High-Purity Glucaric Acid Produced by Microbes”, AIChE, December 2019. 

Kalion Inc. has been awarded a US National Science Foundation (NSF) Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for 747 k$ to conduct research and development work improving the biobased production of glucaric acid. The proposed project will develop a strain, fermentation process, and scalable downstream separation workflow to produce low-cost, high-purity glucaric acid from glucose as a feedstock. Kalion will develop strains of E. coli that can efficiently take up glucose while also directing it to the glucaric acid pathway. Traditional production methods such as nitric acid oxidation suffer from low yields and poor selectivity, which increases production costs. And, chemically synthesized glucaric acid requires extensive purification. A fermentation-based process could yield glucaric acid that is both low-cost and high-purity. 

Glucaric acid can be used to produce novel environmentally-friendly high-performance water treatment solutions. Glucaric acid has also been shown to substantially increase the mechanical properties of certain classes of some textiles, polymers such as polyvinyl alcohol and other materials. Glucaric acid has also been incorporated in the manufacture of nylon via adipic acids as well as in the production of 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA).

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