LignoLink, a State College startup and Penn State spinoff, has won a $750,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Grant from the National Science Foundation. It’s a big step on the road to developing the company’s patented technology for the genetic modification of crops to enhance digestibility for biofuels feedstock and livestock forages.
Penn State professors Ming Tien and John Carlson invented the technology and formed LignoLink in 2011. Scott Welsh, the company’s director of business development, explains the technology like this: “We are developing a method for transforming crops so that they are easier to process into biofuels and are more digestible as animal feed. This technology will reduce the cost of bio-based products and fuels by making processing more efficient, and can improve feed efficiency for livestock.”
The company name comes from “lignin,” a critical component of plant cell walls. But lignin is hard for animals to digest and is an impediment to producing cellulosic-based biofuels. LignoLink’s process addresses those problems by changing the lignin structure so that it can be more easily broken apart.
The technology has been demonstrated in corn and poplar, says Welsh; getting commercial seed in the market is at least five years away. When that day comes, he adds, agricultural seed companies will be the primary market.
Besides the new SBIR grant, LignoLink received early funding from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central and Northern PA. The company currently has three full-time and three part-time employees, and plans to add another full-timer in the next six months.
Source: Scott Welsh, LignoLink
Writer: Elise Vider