Kalion, Inc.

Kalion is an early stage industrial biotech company providing low-cost access to high purity glucaric acid and other chems. using traditional, green, fermentation technol.Technol. Differentiation: Biol. production that allows for high purity glucaric acid necessary for highest value application and polymer applications Size of Company: less than 2 full time Years in Business: 3 since initial funding: Number of Customers : 0 - Testing with customer Revenue:0 Customer Problem: Glucaric acid needs to be of high purity to address pharmaceutical needs.In polymer applications glucaric must be both high purity and low cost.Our fermentation pathway allows us to immediately address the high purity needs of the high costs pharmaceutical markets.Our pathway also allows us address other high value nutraceutical applications.Lastly we will produce low-cost high-purity glucaric for the billion dollar polymer markets.Products & Services: We create microbes (E. coli) with a patented pathway that will allow us to produce a range of products at substantially lower costs.The first of these is high-purity, high-value, glucaric acid.The next set of products include glucuronic acid and myo-inositol.The last product will be low-cost, high-purity glucaric acid.By the end of 2017 we expect to have low volumes of our highest value product available for purchase.Target Market: Glucaric acid has been identified as a unique additive to multiple traditional billion-dollar polymers.The high level of impact supports low-cost, high-purity glucaric acid at $10/lb.In pharmaceutical industry, Adderall require high purity glucaric acid that sells for $30/lb so we will start there.Glucuronic acid and myo-inositol are ingredients for many high energy drinks like 5 H or Monster energy drinks.

Glucaric acid is a com. attractive but elusive bio-based chem.The mol. has received wide-ranging attention from the chem. industry to basic academic research, due to its diverse industrial applications and its potential to be produced from inexpensive and readily accessible agricultural and biomass feedstocks.Despite finding broad utility in products from dietary supplements to corrosion inhibitors, no one has found the technol. trifecta of 1) an economical process, 2) high yields and 3) high purity.Conventional routes to glucaric acid continue to suffer from "pick two" limitations.Kalion, Inc. has developed a novel microbial approach that allows for a high-yielding, cost-effective production of high purity glucaric-based products.For this accomplishment, Kalion was awarded a Green Chem. Challenge award in 2019.This talk will serve as an update on Kalion′s progress toward the com. development of microbial synthesis of glucaric acid, both in terms of scale-up and market development.

The promise of new renewable platform chems. first highlighted in the Department of Energy′s "Top Value Added Chems. from Biomass Report" 20 years ago still remains unfulfilled.Beyond the purely technol. challenges of innovation there are historical dynamics in the market structure and reward system that add complexity.Learn some of the strategies that have been exploited to fulfill the promise and the challenges that remain to achieve the goal of renewable platform chems. using glucaric acid as a case example.