PORTEFEUILLE

In 2023, 350 million tons of hazardous waste, mostly chemicals, was generated, posing serious health and environmental threats. Current disposal methods like incineration are costly, inefficient, and harmful. Existing biological degradation methods face efficiency and scalability limitations. To solve this challenge, at CellX Biosolutions, we are using field-based microfluidics, to bring biological solutions to the next level by capturing high-performance bacterial degraders directly in the environments and formulating biosolutions for targeted, sustainable and cost-effective degradation of industrial chemical waste. Our goal is to deploy bacterial culture "starters" in industrial chemical waste storage reservoirs for target degradation, reducing costs and CO2 emissions. Our current degraders show growth and degradation abilities on various pollutants, including PFAS, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and plastics, and are now optimized at larger scale for future industrial implementation.

In the first phase of the Innobooster project, we are optimizing our PFAS degrader candidates to achieve a minimum viable product (MVP). These bacterial communities will then be scaled up in 0.5 L bioreactors in a laboratory setting. Next, we will develop a bacterial community capable of degrading a target recalcitrant active pharmaceutical ingredient for the pharmaceutical industry. In the second half of the program, the pharmaceutical MVPs will be scaled up in bioreactors, and a protocol for the pilot production of PFAS degraders will be established. Additionally, we are incorporating automation and robotic tools into our high-throughput screening process to streamline the development of degrading communities and MVPs. We plan to incorporate our startup, CellX Biosolutions, by the end of 2024.