• Biosphere—a startup developing UV-sterilized bioreactors it claims can slash biomanufacturing costs—has emerged from stealth armed with $8.8 million in seed financing.
• The round was led by Lowercarbon Capital and VXI Capital, with participation from Founders Fund, GS Futures, Caffeinated Capital, and B37 Ventures, and will accelerate Biosphere’s engineering and scale-up efforts.
• The Oakland, California-based firm has also secured a $1.5 million contract with the US Dept of Defense to Defense to apply its technology toward the production of select bioproducts.

‘A radical departure from legacy systems’

For aseptic production of bioproducts from industrial fermentation from enzymes to omega-3s, firms typically sterilize their bioreactors between batches using capex-intensive steam-in-place sterilization systems characterized by a vast array of pipes and valves, boilers, and a lot of water.

This ensures systems are free of unwanted microorganisms that can produce unwanted byproducts that compromise the quality or safety of the target ingredient and reduce yields by outcompeting the production strain for nutrients.

By killing such contaminants with UV light rather than steam, biomanufacturing firms can reduce capex and maintenance costs, speed up the sterilization process, and potentially cut costs by using cheaper materials such as HDPE rather than stainless steel, says Oakland-based Biosphere.

The approach is a “radical departure from legacy systems in use today” and could unlock more favorable unit economics for bioproducts in nutrition & nutrition, fuels, and green chemicals, claims Biosphere, which was founded in 2022 by materials scientist Dr. Brian Heligman and molecular biologist Arye Lipman.

“Biosphere’s tech delivers 10x more bang for your buck, revolutionizing biotech profitability from the ground up and unlocking the bioeconomy at scale.” Kristin Ellis, Partner, Lowercarbon Capital

‘This is squarely in the realm of engineering, it’s not a multi decade long science project’

“People talk about how biomanufacturing is like brewing beer, but beer production isn’t aseptic,” Heligman told AgFunderNews.

“If you want to make high-value proteins or other ingredients in aseptic conditions, you need scores of custom precision orbital welded stainless steel pipes to transport steam with dedicated condensate traps. And when you have to pipe steam to bioreactors the size of seven-story buildings, it takes a lot of time and generates a lot of stress on the materials.”

As Heligman and Lipman started to explore alternative sterilization approaches, he said, “We realized that UV was the solution, as long as you design systems to ensure you get delivery of the UV to all of the surfaces. And that’s squarely in the realm of engineering, it’s not a multi decade long science project. UV is effective at sterilizing clean non-porous surfaces. It polymerizes the DNA and prevents replication.”

He added: “We think this could massively expand the potential to develop bioreactors that look very different from legacy systems using lower cost materials to scale out with higher productivity, or even move to much larger designs more akin to standard anaerobic digesters. The expansion of the design space is what is really exciting to us, because there are so many constraints resulting from steam sterilization protocols.”

If you’re sterilizing a tank with light rather than steam, meanwhile, “It’s a lot faster than waiting for the whole thing to heat up to 121⁰C,” he said. “Plus there’s a lot less maintenance with regards to corrosion, sensor replacement, and burned on broth [when residual media, sugars, or other organic components from the fermentation broth are exposed to high temperatures and burn or caramelize].”

Meanwhile, being able to design bioreactors “with an expanded design space means you can create entirely new approaches optimized for specific applications” rather than designing them around the steam sterilization process, he claimed.

“But we have to ensure we deliver truly sterile environments for this to work. So we spent the first two years just iterating to deliver that at bench scale and ensure there’s no shadowing [areas within a bioreactor or piping system the UV can’t reach].”

“Our UV bioreactor is not an incremental improvement; it’s a first-principles reimagining of biomanufacturing systems. We’re replacing 80-year-old technology with a cost-effective, scalable platform designed for the future.” Dr. Brian Heligman, Biosphere

From bench to pilot scale

To date, Biosphere has demonstrated the ability to provide effective sterilization at bench scale and is now building a pilot-scale system to demonstrate its patent-pending technology at larger scale and test the tech with partners across the industry, said Heligman.

“It’s actually easier the bigger the tank, so we think it should scale pretty effectively towards large scale commercial systems, but no one’s putting this into a production facility tomorrow. Right now, our big focus is on onboarding committed technology partners where we can do some small-scale manufacturing services and trial runs.”

As for the business model, Biosphere’s core competency is designing and building next generation bio manufacturing systems, he said, “But we are very open to working with partners with expertise across food, enzymes, fragrances, to bring products to market more efficiently.”

An industry first

According to Heligman, while UV light is used for killing unwanted microbes in a variety of settings, “There’s actually no prior art on UV sterilized bioreactors.”

He added: “We’ve been pretty quiet as company for the first two years, but people who have been working in this space for 30 or 40 years have told us they think this could meaningfully change things. I think biopharma is going to be slower to adopt technology like this because they are pretty happy with single use bioreactors. But it’s different talking to players in the specialty, fine and commodity chemical space, and enzymes, flavors, and fragrances.

“We’re extremely excited to be at a place where we’re now running benchtop production for the DoD as we speak, which has taught us a lot about design.