AusBiotech report: Farmacule scores big with Syngenta

Brisbane-based biotech Farmacule BioIndustries has entered into a partnership with Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta and Queensland University of Technology to set up a centre to develop ethanol and biofuels from sugarcane.

The Queensland Government has agreed to contribute $5.1 million to the partnership, which will see the establishment of the Syngenta Centre for Sugarcane Biofuel Development at QUT's Brisbane CBD campus and a pilot manufacturing plant in Mackay.

The deal will involve Farmacule's in-plant activation technology (INPACT), invented by the company's chief scientific officer and QUT plant geneticist Professor James Dale. INPACT is a genetic activation and amplification technology that allows researchers to increase the production of enzymes that convert cellulose to glucose, which can then be fermented to bioethanol.

Cellulosic bioethanol production should also enable ethanol to be produced from sugarcane biomass without affecting the sugar content of the cane.

Farmacule's chairman Mel Bridges said the company had licensed a number of technologies to the partnership, including INPACT, and had agreed to distribution rights in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Farmacule will receive royalties from Syngenta - formed in 2000 following the merger of two Novartis and Zeneca agribusiness divisions - should the technology be successfully commercialised.

"We will be able to use Syngenta's technologies to fast-track development of our own high value industrial and therapeutic protein products, from which we expect to begin generating revenue within two years," Bridges said.