Macquarie start-up Applimex seeks extreme solutions for industry

New Sydney biotechnology company Applimex Systems, Macquarie University’s latest spin-off, is commercialising microbes that, in the modern tabloid lexicon, qualify as 'superbugs'.

The ‘ex’ in Applimex stands for extremophiles, a class of hardy microbes that thrive in some of the toughest environmental conditions on Earth -- hyeracidic or hyperalkaline environments, boiling volcanic springs, around mineral sulphide-spewing 'black smoker' vents in mid-ocean rift zones, and cold, dry Antarctic valleys.

Applimex CEO Tim Wawn said the company has access to a large collection of extremophiles collected by researchers from Macquarie University and Waikato University, in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Wawn said that for some applications, Applimex would use its patented fast-forward evolution technology to tweak the enzymes that allow extremophiles to survive in their hostile habitats, to produce super-industrial strength enzymes. The same technology can also be used to give the living microbes -- bacteria or fungi -- extra industrial muscle. Clients can also bring in their own pet microbes for random mutation and non-natural selection, to optimise their performance.

Applimex is also developing its own, fully organic, fermentation process for the expression of selected enzymes, which it claims has several advantages of current bioreactor systems -- including the capacity to produce high-quality enzymes at low cost.

Wawn said the modified enzymes or microbes will variously be used to bioremediate contaminated agricultural soils or industrial sites, as substitutes for synthetic chemicals in industrial processes, or to produce drugs or vaccines.

The Macquarie University research team is led by Prof Peter Bergquist, a pioneer in the field of cloning and expressing genes from extremophiles, which include both Eubacteria and Archaea microbes, and some fungi.

Maintaining extremophiles in culture, and manipulating their genes, poses unique challenges. Some rift vent bacteria, for example, replicate only at temperatures around the boiling point of water.

Bergquist’s team includes Assoc Prof Helena Nevalainen, an expert in fungal biotechnology, and two research scientists, Dr Moreland Gibbs and Dr Junio T’eo.

“Most of the work has been done at Macquarie University, but we’re collaborating closely with Waikato University,” Wawn said. “We already have commercial collaborations with several parties. The universities retain ownership of the extremophile collections, but we have ready access to the microbes, and we own the expression systems and the IP.

“Our short-term focus will be on industrial applications, but down the track, we plan to explore agricultural and therapeutic applications.”

Wawn said worldwide sales of industrial chemicals now exceeded US$1.5 trillion, with the industrial enzyme market accounting for around $2.5 billion.

“It has been estimated that over the next five to 15 years, the percentage of the market that can be addressed by biotech and industrial enzymes is going to rise to as much as US$200 billion,” he said. "There is an increasing trend towards ‘green chemistry’, because of increasingly stringent environmental regulations or cost pressures. Companies are looking for ways of running industrial processes in a more environmentally friendly way, with reduced energy inputs, milder solvents and minimal toxic by-products.

“The future market is very large, but at the moment it’s a matter of identifying where the market opportunities are, coming up with the right organisms, and then optimising the enzymes for those applications.”

Wawn said it had been estimated that only 1 per cent of the world’s extremophiles had been discovered to date, with the emphasis being on extreme thermophiles, and aerobic microbes. Current collections had only begun to tap the potential biodiversity of extremophiles that could be exploited for industrial applications.

“We’ve identified products that we are confident we can begin marketing within 12 months,” Wawn said. “We want to build a revenue stream rapidly, and industrial applications are not subject to the regulatory issues that apply to new therapeutics.

“We don’t have the collections of companies like Maxygen and Diversa, but no single company has a lock on molecular evolution technology for designing enzymes and proteins. The number of ways available to redesign proteins is not infinite, and there are relatively few players. But while the IP is important, the real battle is going to be at the product end.”