Photanol is a spin of company of the University of Amsterdam. Shareholders are venture capital firm Icos Capital, the University of Amsterdam Holding and the scientific founders.
Photanol's objective is to bring to the market new production routes for the production of bio-compounds with CO2 as a feedstock. The first focus is on the production of LLA to be followed by other valuable organic chemicals such as other organic acids, biofuels, essential oils, and sugars. The strategy is to focus initially on the product with the best technology fit i.e. LLA followed by the production of the D-lactic acid enantiomer. The basis of the growth of the company is the ability to engineer the cyanobacteria in such a way that any compound can be produced
Beyond design and engineering of microbial cell factories, PHO has also been engaged in long-term stable collaboration with multiple academic and industrial partners in photobioreactor design, downstream processing. PHO will have its major role in the metabolic engineering of the Synechocystis and of photobioreactor-design, -construction and -testing. In this work package PHO will contribute to engineering and testing of lactate-overproducing strains, also with improved tolerance. In addition it will design and develop photo-bioreactors up to TRL5.
