Rare sugars expert announces sweetener breakthrough

Announcing they have reached initial project milestones as part of their strategic collaboration, the companies aim to improve the performance of several enzymes that catalyze cascade reactions in the continuous production of low-calorie, ultra low-glycemic, naturally occurring sweeteners.

Tagatose has attracted attention as a sweetener. But despite its health advantages over sugar, tagatose’s cost-effective production remains a roadblock.

Bonumose has developed a process using cornstarch instead of lactose from milk that could potentially lower production costs significantly by 80 percent (to around $3/kg).

The company uses its proprietary enzymatic technology platform to convert abundant plant-based feedstocks to rare sugars via three patented breakthoughs: irreversible enzymatic reactions; low cost and globally-abundant starch feedstocks; and continuous production processes with standard HFCS/sugar equipment.

It said the tie-up with Germany’s BRAIN Biotech will make its operation more cost efficient.

The company uses multiple enzymes within the synthesis cascades and BRAIN Biotech is optimizing several of these enzymes using enzyme engineering.

Bonumose has developed a patented process for producing both tagatose and allulose (not yet approved for use in the EU) which eliminates several processing steps and significantly increases yields during the production process.

Patrick Lorenz, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives BioScience at BRAIN Biotech said: “BRAIN Biotech´s enzyme technology suite has proven once again to deliver on a customer´s challenging protein engineering targets. Based on rational structure- and sequence-guided design we improved individual enzymes and their cumulative performance in cascades to better match production process requirements. The ultimate aim is making production of Bonumose´s beneficial rare sugars even more cost efficient.”​