Public Funding for Cyanetics LTD.

COVID-19, caused by a novel coronavirus, has presented mankind with unprecedented challenges. In order to tackle this ongoing crisis, we require solutions which both **prevent** and **treat** infections. We propose a high-throughput screen to discover compounds which exhibit antiviral properties against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus behind the current pandemic. Our library of over 100 natural-product producing organisms have already been shown as powerhouses of anti-infective production, and our proposal puts these compounds against SARS-CoV-2 in order to identify promising treatments. --ADDITIONAL INFORMATION-- We will also undertake business development activities, taking our library of compounds to potential pharmaceutical partners for evaluation. In addition we will also evaluate our compounds against other targets beyond COVID-19 to fully exploit the materials we have produced.

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Plastic usage will double by 2036, yet \>70% is unrecyclable and \>94% is still produced from virgin hydrocarbons. Despite growing social momentum for a plastics circular economy, re-processing of mixed plastic waste (MPW) is extremely challenging. Waste-to-energy (W2E) technology offers a stepping stone technology, extracting value from MPW but at high environmental cost (CO2 production) and is a fundamentally open-loop process (low on the waste hierarchy). Cyanetics will engineer a new strain of cyanobacteria to fixate CO2 from waste exhaust gas arising from MPW processing to create industrially valuable, sustainable, plastics alternative materials. CO2 production arising from both stop-gap W2E technologies and emergent chemical recycling represents an open loop loss to a plastics circular economy model. We will design process technology based on this strain which will harvest this waste gas, returning it to the plastics value chain (to chemical manufactures) as a sustainably produced bio-plastics (PLA-precursor) which is both bio-degradable and recyclable (by the produced process).

"We are working towards developing, in partnership with Tata Steel, smarter and cleaner manufacturing methods for taking waste CO2 emissions from Tata's existing steel production processes, to use as a raw material for a novel biologically-based manufacturing process. Thus valorising this by creating high-value chemical intermediates which will be used to manufacture steel coating products used in downstream processing, helping to ensure the ongoing profitability and sustainability of Tata's manufacturing operations as we move towards a low-carbon economy. The process is based upon modified cyanobacterium which sequester CO2 and convert it to interesting product endpoints via cellular carbohydrate produced through photosynthesis, and does not rely upon non-sustainable sources of energy to operate. The current project focusses on process modelling and strain engineering to convert CO2 to our target products."