C&EN Inventory: Top 10 Most Notable Chemical Startups in 2022

Chemistry-powered innovation is at the heart
of every company on C&EN's list of the top ten startups to watch in 2022.
It's been a tough year
for young companies trying to raise venture capital.
According to a recent survey by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association, the value of deals reached in the first three quarters of 2022 decreased by nearly 25%
compared to the same period last year.
But even as funding drops, chemistry-focused companies seem to be launched
weekly by entrepreneurs from around the world.
After a lot of discussion and debate with more than 200 companies, we selected the science and technology of 10 companies and reported on them
.
They are:

1.
AIR COMPANY: USING CATALYTIC HYDROGENATION, CHEMICALS ARE MADE FROM ELECTRICITY AND CAPTURED CARBON DIOXIDE

2.
ALLTRNA: Using tRNA to overcome gene-driven diseases

3.
DELIX THERAPEUTICS: Advancing the treatment of psychiatric disorders without travel psychedelic analogues

4.
DMC BIOTECHNOLOGIES: PROVIDES THE PREDICTABILITY OF STANDARD CATALYSTS FOR LIVING CELLS

5.
EXO THERAPEUTICS: DRUG ENZYME EXOSITES TO TREAT DISEASES

6.
MICROPEP TECHNOLOGIES: USE MICROPEPTIDES AS BIOHERBICIDES FOR CULTIVATED CROPS

7.
PHYTOLON: Natural pigments that may actually be used in the food industry

8.
SEPION TECHNOLOGIES: ENABLE THE CONVERSION OF LITHIUM-METAL BATTERIES

9.
TRAVERTINE TECHNOLOGIES: CONVERTING MINING WASTE AND CARBON DIOXIDE INTO SULFURIC ACID AND BUILDING MATERIALS

10.
ZWITTERCO: Using zwwitteric to manufacture antifouling water filters

There is no guarantee that any of the ones selected this year will solve the problems
facing our planet.
But we believe that in the hands of entrepreneurs, chemistry can be a force
for good.

Here are the top 10 chemical startups of 2022:

01 AIR COMPANY: Using catalytic hydrogenation, chemicals are made from electricity and captured carbon dioxide

Founded: 2019

Headquarters: New York

Key point: Producing chemicals and fuels from carbon dioxide

Technology: catalytic CO2 hydrogenation

Founder: Stafford Sheehan and Gregory Constantine

Funding or notable partners: $40 million from investors and partners, including Toyota, Carbon Direct, JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, Boom Supersonic and the U.
S.
Air Force

Air Company founders Stafford Sheehan (left) and Gregory Constantine

The winning strategy for chemical startups is to first bring high-value, low-volume specialty chemicals to market and then use the resulting cash flow to build capacity and technology portfolios to move into higher-volume business lines
.
THAT'S WHAT AIR COMPANY DOES
.
It began launching vodka and perfume bases
containing ethanol made from carbon dioxide in 2020.
This vodka is a classic correct liquor, there is no smell or aftertaste, the astringency is moderate, and there is a slight warmth
when drunk.
The new plant will produce ethanol, but alcohol will be a byproduct of the company's main wish: converting captured carbon dioxide into aviation fuel
.

Co-founder and CTO Stafford Sheehan said, "We do CO2 hydrogenation.
"
"Almost: heterocatalysts in fixed-bed flow reactors"
.
According to a paper recently published by the company in ACS Energy Letters (2022, DOI: 10.
1021/acsenergylett.
2c00214), "A Secret Mixture of Earth's Abundant Metals with Alumina as a Carrier.
"
"Our company is built around the scale of these catalysts," Sheehan said.

The pilot system can produce approximately 7,000 liters of methanol, 19,000 liters of ethanol and 21,000 liters of jet paraffin
per year.
Air Company currently receives 91 percent of its wind and 9 percent of its solar electricity
through the Brooklyn grid through renewable energy credits.

02ALLTRNA: Using tRNA to overcome gene-driven diseases

Founded: 2021

Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Key point: treatment of gene drive diseases

Technology: Transfer RNA to overcome genetic mutations

Founder: Noubar Afeyan, Lovisa Afzelius, Theonie Anastassiadis, David Berry, and Ewen Cameron

Funding or notable partners: $50 million from Flagship Pioneering

In our cells, in a kind of microscopic assembly line, messenger RNA (mRNA) strands are translated into proteins
.
Ribosomes move along mRNA strands, like monotracks on orbits, reading units of genetic code or codons, indicating what amino acids should be added to
the growing polypeptide chains that will become proteins.
But it is another type of molecule that transports amino acids to the ribosome.

The molecule is a transfer RNA (tRNA) that works
by binding to specific codons on the mRNA and bringing the appropriate amino acids to the polypeptide chain.
Another tRNA comes, the next amino acid is added, and so on, until the protein is complete
.
It is this underrated molecule
that Alltrna plans to design to treat genetic diseases.

Transfer RNA molecules (blue) bind to messenger RNA (pink) and add the appropriate amino acids (beige) to the growing polypeptide chain

Alltrna's leaders say its first focus is to engineer tRNAs to overcome certain genetic mutations
.
Sometimes, codons that require amino acids can mutate into "stop" codons, the signal
that ends protein construction.
This is called a nonsense mutation
.
Using a premature stop codon, the ribosome disconnects from the mRNA and releases the protein being built, even if it is incomplete, and the truncated protein can cause disease
.
Alltrna's engineered tRNA will bind to the stop codon and still attach the correct amino acids, allowing protein construction to proceed properly – efficiently reading premature stop codons
.

Michelle C.
Werner, CEO of Alltrna, said, "We actually believe that there is a possible world where we can reclassify patients into groups of common genetic alterations, rather than through these diseases.
"
"So instead of treating one disease, treat this group of patients with multiple different diseases, all unified by shared genetic alterations
.
" It's something
that has never been done before.
The startup employs its own detection and machine learning to identify patterns and test modifications to tRNA that bring the desired characteristics
.
While not revealing any specific disease targets, Werner said the company is exploring therapeutic areas, including rare genetic diseases and oncology
.

03 DELIX THERAPEUTICS: Advancing apertureless psychedelic analogues for the treatment of mental disorders

Founded: 2019

Headquarters: Boston

Key point: Discover psychedelics

Technology: Psychoactive compounds designed as non-hallucinogens

Founder: Nick Haft and David E.
Olson

Capital and key partners: $100 million with investors including Artis Ventures, OMX Ventures and RA Capital Management

David E.
Olson, co-founder and chief innovation officer of Delix Therapeutics

When David E.
Olson was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and Harvard's Broad Institute in the early 2010s, the hallucinogenic anesthetic ketamine was all the rage in psychiatric research
.
Although the drug is heavily regulated, scientists recognize that it has the potential to alter the treatment
of cognitive and behavioral disorders by repairing the brain's neural circuits.
When Olson opened his lab at UC Davis in 2015, his long-term goal was to "identify better versions of ketamine.
"
Olson also intends to use chemical modifications to eliminate hallucinogenic effects that make psychedelics a disgrace
for party drugs.
In 2019, he co-created a small molecule panel for mental health treatment with Delix Therapeutics that can rewire the brain without any adverse side effects
.

In recent years, psychedelics is a psychodissolving agent that has gained popularity
as a mental health treatment for its rapid and lasting effects on behavior and mind.
There are 50-100 pharmaceutical companies involved in psychedelics, but Delix says it stands out for pursuing a rigorous, non-hallucinogenic design ethos inspired by common psychedelics
.
To eliminate hallucinogenic effects, Delix uses chemistry to remove or attach chemical groups from psychedelic
molecules.

Olson said: "Structure produces function"
.
This is the design principle
behind Delix's comprehensive approach.
The company's discovery platform is based on analyzing existing psychedelics and mapping their chemical substructures to the physiological effects
they induce.
Olson said knowing which structural elements to keep, remove or add would allow researchers to design entirely new molecules
.
According to Delix, chemical modifications range from individual nitrogen atoms to larger structural switches
.
The key is to hit the right receptors
in the brain that are involved in synaptic rewiring rather than hallucinogenic activity.
"Our understanding of structure-activity relationships has advanced to the point where we are entering a completely new space where chemical entities do not look like psychedelic compounds,"
Olson said.
The company is advancing a portfolio of more than 1,400 compounds and expects to move 2 major assets to the clinic
early next year.

04 DMC BIOTECHNOLOGIES: PROVIDING THE PREDICTABILITY OF STANDARD CATALYSTS FOR LIVING CELLS

Founded: 2014

Headquarters: Boulder, Colorado

Key Point: Biological processes

Technology: Dynamic metabolic control

Founders: Matthew Lipscomb and Michael D.
Lynch

Funding: Approximately $53 million

Cargill acquired Colorado-based OPX Biotechnologies in 2015, and the company has been thinking a lot about what it has been doing since 2007 — developing a fermentation-based chemical manufacturing process.
Lipscomb recalls "we experienced all of these things firsthand.
"
One of OPX's major achievements is the pilot production of 3-hydroxypropionic acid, a precursor to acrylic acid, from sugar through fermentation.

He and Lynch began to transfer that frustration to a promising breakthrough approach to bioprocessing that works more like the traditional chemical processes
that biomanufacturing is designed to replace.

The technique they devised , dynamic metabolic control, is a two-stage process designed to decouple
the growth of cells from their function as chemical producers.
This approach limits the ability of microbes to respond to the environment and focuses them on
creating enzymes that efficiently undergo biotransformation.
The two companies launched DMC Biotechnologies in 2014 to commercialize
the method.
Lipscomb, the company's chief executive, said the technology could enable standard processing environments
from the lab to the commercial scale, regardless of the intended product.
Lynch, an assistant professor in Duke's Department of Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry, said, "The overall concept of DMC technology is to make cells act like traditional catalysts, and we're basically not adding catalysts to reactors, we're planting catalysts
.
"

The company opened a lab at Duke's BRiDGE incubator in 2018 before moving to Research Triangle Park in North Carolina in 2020, where it completed much of its process development
.
Lynch served as Acting CTO until 2020 to support DMC
in a consulting role.
Last year, DMC announced successful commercial-scale production
of the amino acid L-alanine.
It also announced an agreement that Conagen, a Boston-based metabolic engineering company, will produce the chemical
.
The benefits promised by dynamic metabolic control — lower costs and shorter time-to-market — compared to traditional bioprocess manufacturing — Smith says her motivation is to replace the environmental benefits of
standard chemistry with efficient technology.
DMC also has other products in development: xylitol, a low-calorie sweetener; and branched-chain amino acids, including valine, isoleucine, and leucine, for animal feed and human nutrition applications
.

05 EXO THERAPEUTICS: Treatment of diseases with pharmacological exocuts

Founded: 2020

Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Key Point: Small molecule drug discovery

Technique: Exocle site inhibitors

Founders: David R.
Liu, Juan Pablo Maianti, and Alan Saghatelian

Funding or well-known partners: $103 million
from investors such as Newpath Partners, Nextech Invest, BVF Partners and Novartis Venture Fund.

The results of Juan Pablo Maianti's inhibitor screening are a conundrum
.
Graduate students at the time were looking for compounds that blocked the activity of enzymes that degrade insulin, called insulin-degrading enzymes (IDEs).

But one of these drug candidates looks different
from any other known IDE inhibitor.
Maianti and his advisors, David R.
Liu of MIT and Harvard's Broad Institute, and Alan Saghatelian of the Salk Institute for Biological Research, further explored and found that the inhibitor has surprising properties: it does not bind to the active site of the IDE, the main site of binding to the IDE substrate, and where
the IDE catalyzed reaction occurs.
The team quickly realized that inhibiting the extrovert site had great potential
to solve some of the problems in drug discovery.
This realization put the three scientists on the path to launch Exo Therapeutics, which announced a Series A funding round in December 2020 and a Series B round
in late 2021.

Both insulin and glucagon bind to the active site of IDE, but they have very different sizes and shapes
.
Maianti and his team engineered an inhibitor molecule to target exogenous sites on insulin-bound IDEs, a move that allowed them to inhibit insulin degradation activity without interfering with glucagon degradation
.
Liu said: "We want the active site of the protein to maintain its ability to
do anything.
We just hope it no longer interacts
with substrates or binding partners involved in the disease process.

The team says the technological advances coincide with the identification of exo-based binders
.
First, DNA-encoded library screening is now easy to outsource, making inhibitor-agnostic screening easier
than ever.
Meanwhile, recent advances in protein structure determination—experiments conducted by cryo-electron microscopy, and calculations performed through the AlphaFold platform—have enabled the company to rapidly discover and develop exogenous-based therapies
.
Some of the targets that Exo thinks are worth pursuing "include some of the most important categories of protein targets known for therapeutics," and the company won't specify what its goals are
.
But Saghatelian said its targets include autoimmune indications and cancer
.
"This list continues to grow
as more and more protein structures emerge.

06 MICROPEP TECHNOLOGIES: USING MICROPEPTIDES AS A BIOHERBICIDE FOR ROW CROPS

Founded: 2016

Headquarters: Toulouse, France

Key point: Bioherbicides for field crops

Technique: Micropeptides that silence key genes to stop weed growth

Founders: Jean-Philippe Combier, Thomas Laurent, and Dominique Lauressergues

Funding or well-known partners: $24 million from FMC Ventures, Sofinnova Partners and others

Thomas Laurent, CEO and co-founder of Micropep Technologies

French startup Micropep Technologies is targeting the holy grail of agriculture: a biological herbicide that selectively kills the most problematic weeds
in row crops.

Micropep is developing herbicides based on natural micropeptides that control gene expression
in weeds.
In July, the company raised $8.
6 million to push its product to commercialization
.

Micropeptides are short molecules of 10-20 amino acids that stimulate the production of small pieces of RNA called microRNAs.
MicroRNAs search for corresponding messenger RNAs, which are molecules
that contain instructions to attach amino acids to proteins.
MicroRNAs bind to complementary messenger RNAs, reducing or silencing the proteins
they produce.
Plants use micropeptides and microRNAs to reduce the production of certain proteins in response to changing environmental conditions
.
Micropep hopes to reverse this natural process
by flooding the weed with micropeptides and stopping the weed growth altogether.
When microRNAs are produced in cells, they contain a tail of an extra base pair that is eventually cut off
.
Micropep's other co-founders, Jean-Philippe Combier and Dominique Lauressergues, discovered that RNA tails contain instructions
to make micropeptides that stimulate the production of specific microRNAs.

The first step in the Micropep discovery process is to identify the weed proteins
to target.
From there, its scientists worked backwards, using artificial intelligence to identify the microRNAs
that control the expression of these proteins.

Micropep's approach has several advantages
.
This would be a new mode of action that could allow farmers to kill weeds
that have evolved to tolerate popular synthetic herbicides like glyphosate and dicamba.
Regulators may consider Micropep's products as biopesticides
.
This means that the registration process will be faster and cheaper
.
The company claims that micropeptides break down quickly in the environment and do not harm human health
.
GreenLight Biosciences is working on a similar technique that uses artificial RNA sequences to kill insects
by silencing genes.
For herbicides, Laurent says, micropeptides are more suitable because they are smaller than RNA strands and get inside leaves more easily
.
But the challenge was to find a micropeptide
that could penetrate leaves quickly without breaking down in the relentless conditions of agricultural fields.
While some pharmaceutical companies use chemical synthesis to make peptides, Micropep is using a cheaper bioproduction process
.
The company is currently running fermentation tanks on a scale of several thousand liters, but it is trying to scale up
.
The goal is to reach a cost of 50 cents per gram, which would make the micropeptides cheap enough for field crops
like corn and soybeans.
Trimmer said that if Micropep can solve the cost problem, it may have a bombshell
.

07 PHYTOLON: Manufacturing natural colors that may actually be used in the food industry

Founded: 2018

Headquarters: Illit, Yoknem, Israel

Key point: natural color

Technology: yeast fermentation of betaine pigments

Founder: Halim Jubran, Tal Zeltzer, and Guy Polturak

Funding or notable partners: $14.
5 million in Series A funding from DSM, Ginkgo Bio, Trendline Agrifood Fund and others

Halim Jubran (left) and Tal Zeltzer, the two founders of Phytolon

In 2016, food giant Mars vowed to remove artificial colors
from all its candy, food and beverages within the next 5 years.
But now it's 2022 and the company's M&M candy is still bright thanks to blue, yellow, red and seven other artificial colors
.
Phytolon sees a business opportunity
here.
The 4-year-old Israeli startup is developing fermentation-derived betaine pigments, which its founders say can give food manufacturers the shades they want and the processability
they need.

Phytolon originated from the research of Asaph Aharoni, a professor in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of
Science.
Aharoni and his team identified key genes in the metabolic pathway of betaine, a pigment found in large quantities in betatin such as beets, Swiss chard, and cactus
fruits.

As part of the study, the scientists introduced relevant genes into baker's yeast, and they were surprised to find that yeast cells not only expressed betaine well, but also spontaneously excreted them into the fermentation broth, making them easy to recover
.
"This is when
they recognize the potential of this technology.
Phytolon is developing two strains of yeast, one expressing the yellow pigment xanthin and the other expressing the purple pigment betanin
.
By mixing the two pigments in different proportions, the company can create 75 percent of the colors required by food manufacturers, including purple, yellow, pink, orange and red
.

Its two betaine pigments can produce food colors ranging from yellow to purple

Phytolon isn't the only startup
using fermentation to create natural colors.
But the founder said, "I think in our field, we're the first startup to offer fermentation, and it has a serious contract
with a serious entity.
" Another round of funding was funded by Ginkgo Bioworks, a synthetic biology specialist that provides fermentation services
.
According to Jubran, the Boston-based company is helping Phytolon maximize the efficiency of
both yeast strains.
Phytolon is solving fermentation and purification improvements on its own
.

The company, which employs about 25 people, is demonstrating the production of its pigments at a European contract manufacturing company for 3 reactors, which he says is very close to commercial scale
.
It focuses on penetrating the dairy, confectionery, bakery and plant-based meat markets, and hopes to obtain regulatory clearances
in the United States and Europe in 2023.
Jubran knew that natural colors still couldn't always provide the vitality of synthetic materials, and they were more expensive
.
He said
.
"We've closed some gaps
that current natural colors can't bridge.
That's news
that Mars' M&M team should be happy to hear.

08 SEPION TECHNOLOGIES: ENABLING THE TRANSITION TO LITHIUM-METAL BATTERIES

Founded: 2015

Headquarters: Emeryville, California

Key takeaway: long-range and low-cost electric vehicles

Technology: Nanoporous polymer membrane and liquid electrolyte stabilized lithium metal battery

Founder: Pete Frischmann and Brett Helms

Funding or well-known partners: $16 million in Series A funding, led by Fine Structure Ventures and other investors, including Solvay

Employees of Sepion Technologies are based at the company's headquarters in Emeeryville, California

For Pete Frischmann, co-founder and CEO of California-based startup Sepion Technologies, the transition to electric vehicles isn't fast
enough.
He said
.
I don't think people fully understand how big this shift is and how important
it is to build new mines and supply chains to combat climate change.
The cost of lithium-ion batteries is to make electric vehicles more affordable, but battery packs account for one-third
of the cost of electric vehicles.
Sepion believes it could be a game-changer by helping manufacturers switch from existing lithium-ion batteries to the company's lithium-metal battery approach
.
The startup promises automakers that its technology will reduce costs per kWh by 15 percent and increase the range of electric vehicles by 40 percent
.
Lithium metal batteries have an anode made of pure lithium and are expected to more than
double the energy storage capacity of today's graphite anode batteries.
However, the commercialization of lithium-metal batteries has been elusive because they are prone to fire and typically last only a few hundred charge cycles
.
Sepion says a typical battery separator has holes
with a diameter of 20-200 nm.
Its film has a coating with 0.
5-4.
0 nm holes, creating a more uniform current density on the anode and producing a flatter lithium plating instead of unwanted spikes
.
The startup says the membrane also helps avoid chemical reactions
between electrolyte and lithium that can occur in lithium-metal batteries.
Frischmann said: "Our membranes are different in that they are not solid ionic conductors
.
They are materials that interact with electrolytes; The pores of the membrane expand to a certain extent
with the electrolyte.
"This is essentially a new phase
of the substance located on the surface of lithium metal.

Frischmann and Brett Helms founded Sepion
in 2015.
They initially planned to commercialize Sepion's membranes for a variety of applications, including lithium-sulfur and flow batteries
.
But two years ago, Frischmann decided to shut down all application development for the company to focus on lithium-metal batteries for electric cars, a startup he believes could have the biggest impact
on climate change.
The venture capital community took notice, and in November 2021, Sepion raised $16 million in funding
.
Today, it has about 25 employees
.
Sepion's battery technology is designed to be easily adopted
by the automotive industry.
The company plans to sell coated separators and then license electrolyte and lithium-metal battery designs to automotive battery manufacturers who can switch current lithium-ion battery production from graphite to lithium metal anodes
at minimal cost.
According to Frischmann, Sepion has a backlog of sample requests
from more than a dozen battery manufacturers.
The company plans to expand production to 10,000m2 separators next year
.
Frischmann said that if all goes according to plan, he will drive an electric car
powered by Sepion within 5 years.

09 TRAVERTINE TECHNOLOGIES: CONVERTING MINING WASTE AND CARBON DIOXIDE INTO SULFURIC ACID AND BUILDING MATERIALS

Founded: 2022

Headquarters: Boulder, Colorado

Key takeaway: converting mining waste and carbon dioxide into sulfuric acid, building materials, hydrogen and oxygen

Technology: Electrochemistry characterized by water electrolysis

Founder: Laura Lammers

Funding or high-profile partners: $3 million from investors such as Clean Energy Ventures and Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust

A conversation with a California mining company about the dual challenges of sulfate mine waste and the high cost of sulfuric acid prompted Laura Lammers, then an assistant professor of environmental geochemistry at UC Berkeley, to create a process
that could solve both problems simultaneously.
Another benefit of the Ramers process is that it captures carbon dioxide
.
A YEAR AND A HALF LATER, IN JANUARY 2022, LAMMERS TESTED HER IDEA ON A LAB SCALE AND VENTURED OUT OF ACADEMIA TO BECOME THE FOUNDER AND CEO
OF THE STARTUP TRAVERTINE TECHNOLOGIES.
Ramers' idea, now the core technology of travertine, involves the use of electrochemistry to convert sulfate waste (typically produced by metal mining companies that use sulfuric acid to leach metals from ore) into sulfuric acid
.
This process not only recycles mine waste but also consumes carbon dioxide.
Travertine does this
by combining sulfate-rich mining waste, including materials containing phosphogypsum, calcium or magnesium, with hydroxyl ions produced by water electrolysis.
The reaction absorbs carbon monoxide to form calcium or magnesium carbonate material from air or point sources, which can be sold to the construction industry for use in the manufacture of cement and heat-resistant bricks
.
This reaction is a rapid version
of a natural geological weathering process called the Yuri cycle.

Travertine Technologies combines sulfate-rich mine waste with carbon dioxide to make sulphuric acid and carbonate building materials
.

The biggest cost in this process is electricity, and to be truly sustainable, travertine needs to use renewable electricity
.
Using electricity from coal-fired power plants will eliminate any net CO2 removal
.
She said her lab tests showed good results from the start, and she has filed two provisional patents
for the process.
Under her leadership, the company quickly raised $3 million in seed funding, in addition, the company raised $500,000
by pre-selling carbon sequestration credits to a $1 billion fund, Frontier.
Payment processing company Stripe created the fund to support companies
with early-stage carbon removal technologies.

The amount the company has raised should be enough to test its process at 1 kg of CO2 per day for sequestration and 2.
2 kg of sulfuric acid production
at a demonstration plant in Boulder, Colorado.
The funding will also enable Travertine to design a facility to sequester 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide per day at the partner
company's mine.
The company has grown to seven employees, including an electrochemist and a mining engineer
.

10 ZWITTERCO: Use zwitterion to manufacture antifouling water filters

Founded: 2018

Headquarters: Woburn, Massachusetts

Key point: wastewater treatment

Technology: Zwitterion-filter membranes

Founders: Christopher Drover, Alex Rappaport, and Chris Roy

Funding or well-known partners: $45 million

Founders of ZwitterCo: Chief Technology Officer Christopher Drover, CEO Alex Rappaport and Head of Applications Engineering Chris Roy

ZWITTERCO WAS FOUNDED IN 2018 WHEN THERE WAS A PROBLEM
.
Many conventional water filtration membranes (made from materials such as polysulfone, polyacrylonitrile, and polyamide) tend to be contaminated
with fats, oils, and other hydrophobic molecules.
If this contaminant is present in the water, even at concentrations of only a few parts per million, the membrane may be destroyed
in days or even hours.
said Alex Rappaport, co-founder and CEO of
Boston-area companies.
"If you can reduce fouling, if you can eliminate this failure mode, you can use filtration
more broadly.
" As the name suggests, ZwitterCo's approach to solving problems relies on zwitterions, molecules with positively and negatively charged groups
.
To manufacture its membranes, the company copolymerizes these zwitterions to create its active filter layer
.
"Zwitterionics are some, if not the most hydrophilic, class of high-performance polymers,"
Rappaport said.
The zwitterions in the company's membrane act as conduits for water, but they reject hydrophobic fats and oils
.
The impact of chemical reactions is enormous
.
ZwitterCo says its membranes can withstand oils and greases
of 10,000 ppm or even 100,000 ppm.
Some of the company's filter elements have been in operation on site for more than a year, cleaning regularly but not needing to be replaced
.
Rappaport says the company's technology is a good choice
for treating wastewater with high concentrations of organic molecules.
With no other filtration tools currently available, this water is now treated with chemicals such as flocculants, which collect organic matter and convert it into sludge
.
Similarly, the company is treating wastewater
from the meat, poultry and dairy industries.
Using filtration may allow food processors to recover proteins, oils, or other nutrients
that can be added to pet food or animal feed.
Through chemical treatment, these potentially useful materials are hauled away
as waste.
The water can go through further treatment steps such as reverse osmosis and be reused
as fresh water.

ZwitterCo's technology originated in the lab of Ayse Asatekin, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Tufts University who previously had experience
commercializing water films.
In 2011, she co-founded Clean Membranes, a company based on polyacrylonitrile membranes
developed during her PhD work at MIT.
At Tufts University, Asatekin conducted basic research on zwitterionic materials and conducted laboratory tests to generate preliminary performance data
.
This work will be at the heart of
ZwitterCo.
At the time of its launch in 2018, ZwitterCo was one of the winners of the Tufts Gordon Institute's $100,000 new venture capital competition for Rappaport's publicity
in cleaning up wastewater from oil and gas drilling.
Shortly thereafter, ZwitterCo attracted investment
.
The company and Asatekin's lab received $225,000 from the National Science Foundation, and the U.
S.
Department of Energy awarded the company $1.
25 million to explore the purification of wastewater
from oil and gas extraction.
In 2021, the company raised $5.
9 million in seed funding
in a round led by filtration specialist Mann+Hummel and venture capital firm R-Cubed Capital Partners.
Two months ago, ZwitterCo closed a $33 million Series A round led by venture capital firm DCVC, which also backed synthetic biology company Zymergen, which was later acquired
by Ginkgo Bioworks.
Since taking over the technology from Asatekin, ZwitterCo has focused on packaging it as a commercial product, identifying the best applications for its use, and scaling it up so that membranes
can be manufactured efficiently.
To date, ZwitterCo has raised $45 million
.
The company currently has 45 employees and has signed 16 commercial projects
since 2021.
By the end of this year, its installed module base will be able to purify nearly 4 million liters of water
per day.