NOTE as of February 2, 2023: This company has now pivoted to Fc antibody engineering with their new protein engineering platform. More details to come soon.

The major lesson of the Cleantech 1.0 era was “reduce or avoid the Capex.” Today, in the new Cleantech 2.0 era, we are always looking for companies that can scale up without the huge investment needed into expensive facilities.

Proteinea is a new approach to the field of precision fermentation. You might call it “bioreactor-free.” Rather than growing high-value complex biologics in e coli, or in yeast, or even in insect cells – inside large steel bioreactors – Proteinea uses whole insect larva, growing on low-cost feedstocks. These larva are inoculated and produce the target biologic in every cell, then through downstream processing, the target biologic is extracted and purified. 

With this approach, bioproduction can scale up far more rapidly and with ultra-low capex spend. Right now, Proteinea is working on multiple projects with three corporate partnerships. One is scaling up a polio-vaccine. One is an aquafeed vaccine. And one is a biologic drug.