MSU plant opens doors to bioeconomy companies

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An MSU professor will work on turning cornstarch into medicine at the university’s Bioeconomy Institute in Holland, Mich.

Afid Therapeutics Inc., owned by biochemistry and microbiology professor Rawle Hollingsworth, will be the first bioeconomy company to use the labs and production plant at the MSU-owned facility in Holland.

The 138,000-square-foot facility was donated to MSU by Pfizer in 2008.

It’s now available for bioeconomy companies that have outgrown a traditional laboratory setting.

The plant can produce almost 200 times as many liters of chemicals as a traditional lab.

Bioeconomy companies are companies that produce economic activity from research and use of renewable energy sources.

Hollingsworth said Michigan’s history of chemical manufacturing and agriculture, as well as its land and water resources, make it a good state for bioeconomy companies.

“The long-term vision is to develop a sustainable industry with chemistry based on agricultural parts as its core,” Hollingsworth said. “This is a place where Michigan holds all the cards.”

According to an MSU press release, Afid will employ about 10 engineers and chemists in Holland.

Paul Hunt, associate vice president for research, said Afid will pay the university to use its facilities and services.

Though Hollingsworth works for MSU, Hunt said the Bioeconomy Institure will offer its space to any interested company.

“(The criteria are that) it uses agriculture-derived starting materials and it is ready for scale-up in the pilot plant,” Hunt said.

The pilot plant can make about 4,000 liters of chemicals in a single batch, Hunt said, but a laboratory setting can only make about 20 to 25 per batch.

“We have current and pending orders for thousands of pounds of materials,” Hollingsworth said.

“As we’ve developed, people have reached the point where they’re not happy with a few hundred grams.”

Hollingsworth said he has developed 500 chemical products from organic materials, including the starch left over from processing corn.

More than 100 pharmaceutical companies want to use some of them in drugs to treat cancer, diabetes and autoimmune and neurological disorders, he said. He also is developing one chemical for NASA.

“We try to use carbohydrates in a way that traditional chemistry uses petroleum,” he said. “It’s not just about getting food anymore. We have to find alternative uses for crops.”

Betsy Braid, spokeswoman and director of communications and programs for the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan, said it had funded Hollingsworth’s research to find ways to use leftover corn. The program gets one penny for each bushel of corn grown in Michigan.

“We have more than one billion bushels that are left over without a use (nationwide in a typical year),” she said. “We’re kind of looking at what will be the next ethanol.”

The facility can probably accommodate six to 20 companies, depending on what they’re doing, Hunt said, and several companies have expressed interest in using the facility’s space.

He declined to name them, and said talks were ongoing.

Hunt said he wouldn’t know how much space Afid would need until it had finished scaling up its production.

If Afid succeeds in the Holland plant, Hunt said, it could eventually move up to a full-scale plant somewhere else.

“Certain aspects of chemical processes can become more challenging when you scale them up,” he said.

“The processes when you make two dozen chocolate chip cookies are not the same as when you make 200,000 chocolate chip cookies, and it’s the same with chemical processes.”

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