Fermelanta engineers bacteria to produce high-value plant secondary metabolites, including benzylisoquinoline alkaloids such as morphine, by reconstructing multi-step enzymatic pathways in microbial cells. The company reports introducing up to 20 heterologous plant genes into a single bacterial genome to enable complex metabolic cascades. At laboratory and bench scales it can obtain tens of grams per batch and is working with external CDMOs to scale production to tens–hundreds of kilograms per batch. Its pipeline spans pharmaceutical and agricultural alkaloids, flavonoids, carotenoids, pigments, polysaccharides, vitamins and peptides. Fermelanta positions microbial fermentation as faster and cheaper than plant cell culture for many targets and aims to develop “synthetic organisms” capable of producing a wide range of compounds at low cost. The firm plans to use new capital to expand R&D pipelines, enhance scale-up capabilities from lab to pilot stage, and pursue business development and partnerships for commercialization. Fermelanta engineers bacterial strains to reproduce complex plant enzymatic pathways and produce benzylisoquinoline alkaloids such as morphine, codeine, berberine and magnoflorine via precision fermentation. The team reports having introduced up to 20 heterologous plant genes into a single bacterial genome to enable multi-step metabolic pathways, including the 12-step route to S-reticuline and further steps to opium alkaloids. The company draws on 15 years of research from Ishikawa University and says the university's patents have been transferred to Fermelanta. Cofounder and CEO Shogo Fukizaki said the startup plans to strengthen its core technology with about 1.5 years of R&D and then move to prototyping and scale-up. Its business plan is to produce some molecules in-house and partner with contract manufacturers under licensing arrangements for others. Fermelanta highlighted that the molecules it makes are identical to existing market chemicals, which it says affects regulatory strategy compared with novel drug discovery.

Total raised

$15M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Aug 2025