Cocoon Bioscience was founded in 2022 as a spin-off of the company Algenex, with the aim of producing biocompounds obtained through CrisBio® technology for the health and food markets, with the licence to exploit four patents related to the technology.
The company’s growth strategy is focused on strengthening its R&D activity aimed at developing new products, as well as developing new production processes to improve efficiency and reduce costs in order to improve competitiveness.
Cocoon currently has R&D facilities in Tres Cantos, Madrid. In addition, it has installed its pilot plant in the BIC, which will allow it to prepare to scale up its production to its new industrial facility located in the Bizkaia Technology Park, which will be operational in 2024 and will have a production capacity of more than 15 kilograms per year of these biocomposites.
The CrisBio® technology is based on the expression of baculovirus vectors using the chrysalis of the Trichoplusia Ni worm as a natural bioreactor to produce biocomposites, and has the potential to offer a number of important advantages compared to industrial bioreactors, as it allows for higher scalability and performance at much lower costs.
In 2021, the EMA (European Medicines Agency) validated the technology by issuing a favourable opinion for a vaccine produced with the technology, thus boosting the application of CrisBio® as an alternative to current expression technologies. CrisBio® aims to become a new paradigm in the production of biological products to meet the global demand for growth factors for the cultured meat industry, enzymes involved in the manipulation of nucleic acids for the biotechnology industry and other biocomponents.