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FORNY20-FORNY2020

KVAL: All-in-One: Production of G-block containing alginate from Pseudomonas fluorescens

Alternative title: Alt-i eitt: Produksjon av alginat med G-blokker frå Pseudomonas fluorescens.

Awarded: NOK 0.50 mill.

Project Number:

329512

Project Period:

2021 - 2022

Funding received from:

Subject Fields:

Biopolymers have played an important role in food and feed, as well as in industrial and pharmaceutical applications for decades. Alginate is a linear biopolymer consisting of mannuronic acid (M) and guluronic acid (G). The ratio and composition of M and G monomers and the molecular weight determine the properties of the polymer. High G alginates are valuable materials with a broad range of industrial applications. Alginates are currently extracted from brown seaweeds, but to be able to supply enough material meeting the market need for large disease indications and other related industries, it is of vital importance to establish bacterial fermentation processes for production of alginate. The Pseudo-G-block project team consists of SINTEF Industrial and Marine Biotechnology and NTNU Department of Biotechnology and Food Science. The project aim was to develop a bacterial strain capable of producing high G alginate which can be further processed to produce alginate oligosaccharides called “OligoG” that have several promising medical applications for example in treatment of Cystic Fibrosis. A successful bacterial strain will open for new projects with industry for further development and optimization of the production process to meet the criteria for scale up production. In the project, SINTEF in collaboration with NTNU could construct a mutant, as a proof of concept, that is able to introduce some G-blocks to the alginate although it still requires further optimisation work to increase the degree of epimerisation.

The high-cost global market is dominated by high-G alginates, which have a wide range of applications in different industries. The cost of current bacterial production, yet in the R&D stage, is only affordable for specific expensive pharmaceutical products and prohibits access to the other market niches where lower cost products are needed. Based on the results obtained during the project, it was shown that it is possible to make a new production strain, although it needs further optimisation work to replace the current strain. Realisation of such optimised mutant strain will significantly reduce the production cost of bacterial alginate for the existing pharmaceutical market and potentially open to new market areas. Applications like treatment of chronic infections in cystic fibrosis, dressings for treatment of chronic wounds, treatment of gastric reflux (GERD), disintegrant for tablets, emulsion stabiliser, and gelling functionalities and preservative agent for food and bakery industries will potentially benefit the individual users in providing new or improved functionalities, and industrial parties in being able to manufacture and offer improved products

Funding scheme:

FORNY20-FORNY2020