A lab-grown tree is the source of both a biofungicide and an adjuvant for a COVID-19 therapy . We spoke with Gaston Salinas of Botanical Solution
The last few months have seen some major developments for US start-up firm Botanical Solution ( BSI ). At the end of 2020 , it secured $ 3.3 million from multiple banks and ‘ angel ’ investors in a seed round of funding , with a further $ 6 million round planned shortly . After several years of partnership in Chile , the company also reached an agreement with Syngenta to commercialise its first product in Peru and Mexico . More significantly still , it made its first moves towards the pharma market . Co-founder and CEO Gaston Salinas , an industrial engineer by training , spent the early part of his career in his native Chile , working on new product development . He met his business partner , biologist Gustavo Zúñiga , by chance in 2010 . Zúñiga had worked with native plants from the continental and Antarctic regions of Chile and combined biotech with them . Many of these were not easy to source because of their remoteness , so he studied lab-grown versions too . In the case of Quillaja saponaria Molina , he found that those he grew in his own lab generated specific phenolic compounds , different to those they would generate in wild conditions , and that these had fungicidal activity . The technique was patented in the US in 2012 and in Europe in 2013 . “ The interesting thing is that in natural conditions , the tree does not produce these compounds spontaneously in sufficient quantities
Salinas
24 SPECIALITY CHEMICALS MAGAZINE ESTABLISHED 1981