BLOOMAGE BIOTECH Rescues the World’s “Chickens” by Microbial Fermentation Technology

January 2023 is the 23rd anniversary of the establishment of BLOOMAGE BIOTECH, a world-renowned biotechnology company. In these 23 years, BLOOMAGE BIOTECH has grown from a start-up hyaluronic acid raw material enterprise to a large-scale production of hyaluronic acid through fermentation, and gradually became a leader in the industry. In 2022, the annual output of hyaluronic acid was more than 300 tons.

The comb is one of the animal tissues with the highest known hyaluronic acid content, and each gram of comb contains 7.5 mg of hyaluronic acid. With the medical use of hyaluronic acid in orthopedics and ophthalmology being gradually discovered, cockscomb was used to extract hyaluronic acid. Although a large number of chickens have been sacrificed, the amount of hyaluronic acid obtained by human beings is very small. Only one kilogram of hyaluronic acid can be extracted from every 20,000 cockscomb. It is precisely because the extraction rate is extremely low and it is difficult to obtain, so the price of hyaluronic acid was very high in the past, and the high-purity medical hyaluronic acid reached 100,000 US dollars/kg, which was more expensive than gold at that time.

Frost&Sullivan’s report shows that the global market sales of hyaluronic acid raw materials will be 720 tons in 2021. According to this figure, at least 14.4 billion chickens are needed every year to meet the raw material demand of the global hyaluronic acid market, and this figure is still growing at a compound annual growth rate of 14.4%.

Fortunately, we now have a more efficient and scientific method to obtain hyaluronic acid. After BLOOMAGE BIOTECH was founded in 2000, it began to mass-produce hyaluronic acid by microbial fermentation, using corn and potatoes as fermentation materials and obtaining hyaluronic acid by microbial fermentation. This research not only protects chickens, but also greatly reduces the cost of obtaining hyaluronic acid and improves production efficiency, so it won the second prize of Second-Class National Science and Technology Award.

After more than 20 years of continuous technical improvement and upgrading, the fermentation yield of BLOOMAGE BIOTECH hyaluronic acid has also developed from less than 3g/L at the beginning to 16-17g/L today, reaching the international leading level. The product quality of hyaluronic acid also far exceeds the standards of European Pharmacopoeia and Japanese Pharmacopoeia, and the impurity levels such as nucleic acid and endotoxin are 1/50 and 1/20 of the international standards of European Pharmacopoeia respectively.

More importantly, this technology enables hyaluronic acid to be produced on a large scale, and the price drops rapidly, becoming a product that the public can afford, and also laying an important technical foundation for the outbreak of hyaluronic acid industry.

There is no end to technological innovation and development. In recent two years, through the latest synthetic biotechnology, BLOOMAGE BIOTECH has once again optimized and upgraded its microbial fermentation technology. At present, the fermentation yield of hyaluronic acid in the laboratory has reached 73g per liter of extract, the production cost has been reduced by 3/4, the production efficiency has been greatly improved, and it is more low-carbon and environmentally friendly.

In addition to hyaluronic acid, BLOOMAGE BIOTECH has now obtained more bioactive substances that are beneficial to human life and health through synthetic biotechnology and microbial fermentation technology, such as gamma- aminobutyric acid, ekdoine, ergothionine and so on.

In the future, based on biotechnology, we will get high-quality protein without breeding animals such as cattle and sheep, get bird’s nest acid without stealing Swiftlet’s nest, and get squalane without hunting sharks. Biotechnology can save more lives, save more resources and make people live in harmony and symbiosis with nature.