Davis-based agricultural technology company Botanical Solution Inc. has a partnership agreement with British ingredients company Croda International PLC to ramp up production of its rare sustainable plant extracts that have pharmaceutical uses.
Botanical Solution uses indoor-raised plants as tiny biofactories to manufacture rare extracts in a patented process that allows it to control conditions and outcomes in infant plants so that rare and protected species don’t have to be harvested as adult plants in the wild.
“This is a huge deal for BSI to scale up to kilogram quantity,” Botanical Solution spokesman Jon Amdursky told the Business Journal.
Croda had sales of $2.3 billion in 2021. It operates in nearly 40 countries, making life sciences and consumer care products. Botanical Solution's agreement is with the subsidiary Croda Pharma.
In February, Botanical Solution raised $6.1 million in expansion capital in a deal led by Palo Alto-based private equity firm Otter Capital LLC. That round included two existing investors, Inversiones el Coigue and Inversiones Eurocel, both based in Santiago, Chile. Botanical Solution previously raised $3.3 million about two years ago.
Botanical Solution has mastered a laboratory approach to grow plant material from the soap bark tree, or Quillaja Saponaria, from which QS-21 can be extracted. The adjuvant QS-21 is used to increase efficacy of vaccines and medicines. The soap bark tree is native to Chile, and is protected in the wild.
"BSI and Croda Pharma are natural partners with a shared vision on removing the barriers that have prevented mass adoption of QS-21 for developing highly efficacious modern vaccines," Botanical Solution CEO Gaston Salinas said in a news release.
Botanical Solution manipulates and stresses the plants with precise protocols that create conditions that don’t occur in the wild. As the plant tries to defend itself, it creates the kind of compounds that the company is seeking to encourage and isolate.
Botanical Solution grows plant tissue culture indoors in controlled environments on vertical racks. Its system is essentially a clean room that allows for no contamination. The process can keep cultivation going continuously, and it allows its material to be harvested after only 60 days.
“BSI’s unique and innovative processes for growing Quillaja Saponaria biomass in their labs and then extracting the QS-21 from these young plants is a game changing approach,” said Peter Tygesen, head of Croda’s Adjuvant Business, in a news release.
Botanical Solution also has partnerships with Switzerland-based crop protection company Syngenta AG to deliver an agricultural crop protection product also using extracts from the soap bark tree.
