Microbia Targets Lycopene Market

LEXINGTON, Mass. Microbia Inc. announced it used its proprietary metabolic engineering capabilities to develop microbial strains that produce commercially significant levels of lycopene via fermentationin excess of 5 g/liter. According to the company, it has initiated safety studies for the carotenoid and anticipates selling into the food ingredient and dietary supplements markets early this year.

The results of these studies and the rapid timeline in which they were completed confirm the remarkable potential of our novel bio-manufacturing methods to produce carotenoids, compounds that currently represent a commercial opportunity in excess of $1 billion, said Marcus Lovell Smith, CEO of Microbia. We are already at a substantial cost advantage over many traditional manufacturing processes, and we will continue to aggressively pursue even higher yields and production rates. Moreover, there are over 600 carotenoids found in nature, and we are confident that our technology can be tuned to make any number of them cost effectively.

The carotenoids are part of Microbias larger effort to develop a unique production platform for lipophilic or fat-loving compounds. Microbia researchers have established the feasibility of this platform for producing a wide variety of ingredients, spanning the food, feed and commodity chemical sectors.