Industrial biotechnology · Hygiene and personal care materials
Lygos
A Berkeley Lab spinout that taught yeast to make malonic acid without cyanide, then became a specialty chemicals supplier whose polymers end up in shampoo, diapers and fertilizer. Its healthcare connection runs through ingredients, not patients.
The chemical nobody wants to make
Malonic acid is a small molecule with an outsized reach. It turns up in flavors and fragrances, in coatings, in electronics manufacturing, and in the synthesis of drugs. Making it the old way means handling sodium cyanide and chloroacetic acid.
That is why almost none of it is made in the United States or Europe. SynBioBeta, profiling the company in 2019, noted that almost all of the world’s 60,000 ton annual supply comes out of China, and that a 2015 explosion at a Tianjin plant holding several hundred tons of sodium cyanide killed more than 100 people.
In 2012, three researchers connected to the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory did what nobody had managed. No microbe makes malonic acid naturally, and earlier attempts to engineer one had failed. With $150,000 of DOE small business money, Eric Steen, Jeffrey Dietrich and Clem Fortman built an acid tolerant yeast strain that did.
In March 2015, Lygos and Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Biofuels Process Demonstration Unit announced the first pilot scale run. In November 2017 the process ran again at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in the largest fermentation vessels that site had, under a cooperative research agreement paid for in part by a $300,000 DOE Small Business Voucher.
What the healthcare link is, and what it is not
Say it plainly. Lygos has no FDA clearance and no FDA approval, because it has never submitted a device or a drug. It has no registered clinical trial, no NIH award, and no peer reviewed paper about its own products. The FDA 510(k) and premarket approval databases, ClinicalTrials.gov, NIH RePORTER and PubMed return nothing for the company as of September 2026.
The link to health is real anyway, and it sits one layer back in the supply chain. Berkeley Lab’s 2015 announcement called malonic acid useful for the production of a variety of pharmaceuticals, flavors, fragrances and specialty materials. Lygos markets its malonate line, Ecoteria, into fragrances, coatings, agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and SynBioBeta listed surgical adhesives and food and drug additives among the molecule’s downstream uses.
The second thread is more direct. Soltellus, the polyaspartate line, carries the cosmetic name sodium polyaspartate and is sold for hair and skin formulations. Lygos is also building it into a superabsorbent polymer platform for absorbent hygiene products. A company post from September 2025 puts that market bluntly: “Whether in diapers, adult incontinence products, or period care, consumers demand reliable performance that delivers comfort, dryness, and security.” Today’s superabsorbents are petroleum based polyacrylates that persist in the environment.
Nothing here treats a disease. Everything here touches products people put on their skin, wear against their body, or swallow in a tablet built from an intermediate the company supplies.
Founders, and a famous name on the board
Steen did his doctorate at UC Berkeley on programming microbes to turn sugar into fuel, then turned to replacing toxic petrochemistry. Dietrich, the other technical co-founder, became chief technology officer and is the named inventor on most of the patents. Jay Keasling, the synthetic biology pioneer who ran the Joint BioEnergy Institute, is listed as a founder on the company website and appears as a director on every Lygos Form D from 2011 through 2019. Leonard Katz sat on the early board too.
The company went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2016 batch, six years after incorporation, an unusual path for a fermentation business. Y Combinator files it under healthcare. The company calls itself a sustainable specialty chemical company.
From one molecule to a product line
Bio-malonic acid was the first product. Then came polyaspartates, a different chemistry sold on performance rather than on sustainability alone. Soltellus launched for home care, agronomy and water treatment in 2023, and for personal care at the New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists supplier show in May 2024.
Manufacturing came through partners. In October 2023 Lygos signed with CJ Food & Nutrition Tech, part of South Korea’s CJ CheilJedang, for large scale production of the precursors behind both lines. In September 2024 the two announced a memorandum of understanding for a biorefinery complex at Fort Dodge, Iowa, next to CJ’s amino acid plant and Cargill’s corn mill.
There was also a road not taken. In April 2022 Lygos signed a definitive merger agreement with Flexible Solutions International, a listed maker of polyaspartate biopolymers, in a deal that would have made Lygos public. On September 30, 2022 the two sides terminated it, with no reason given. In February 2026 Lygos sold the agronomy and water treatment halves of Soltellus to Dober, the Illinois manufacturer already making the polymer for it, and kept home care, personal care and hygiene.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Federal SBIR record | SBIR.gov lists a first award in 2011, 7 Phase I awards totaling $850,000 and 4 Phase II awards totaling $3,198,213, or $4,048,213 in all, across DOE, USDA and NSF. | Public record |
| Most recent award | NSF 2449589, Transporters with Transformers, $2,375,361 obligated, January to June 2025, principal investigator Rebecca Lennen. | Public record |
| National lab scale up | Pilot scale at Berkeley Lab, March 2015, funded in part by the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office. Larger scale at NREL, November 2017, under a CRADA and a $300,000 DOE voucher. | Public record |
| Patents | At least six US patents name Lygos, Inc. as assignee, granted March 2022 to January 2025: calcium malonate, dialkyl malonate esters, D-lactic acid, L-lactic acid, isobutyric acid, glycolic acid. | Public record |
| FDA, trials, NIH, papers | No 510(k), no premarket approval, no registered trial, no NIH award. A PubMed search returned two records, neither describing Lygos technology. | Not found |
| Commercial plant | The 2024 MOU describes over 40,000 metric tons a year at first, expansion to 100,000, about 60 permanent jobs, and an 18 to 24 month build. No groundbreaking has been announced as of September 22, 2026. | Partner-stated |
| Products in market | The company says Soltellus reached more than 350,000 acres in agronomy in its first year and was adopted by prominent home care brands. No brand is named and no revenue is published. | Company-stated |
| Business unit sale | Dober announced on February 9, 2026 that it had bought the agronomy and water treatment businesses and would make Soltellus at Hazleton, Pennsylvania. | Partner release |
| Founding year | The company and most coverage say 2011. The Form D filed in April 2011 lists 2010 as the year of incorporation. | Claim differs |
Read plainly: the science cleared its bar years ago, twice, at two national laboratories, and the patents are real. What is still open is scale. A 40,000 ton plant has been described in detail for two years without a groundbreaking, and the hard commercial event of 2026 was a sale of two business lines, not a plant opening. The company is operating, hiring and shipping product.
What to watch
- Groundbreaking at Fort Dodge. Construction was estimated at 18 to 24 months once it starts.
- Whether the hygiene superabsorbent moves from blog posts to a named customer.
- A new Form D. The last one covers a round whose first sale was in November 2018.
- What the Dober sale funded, and whether more product lines follow it out the door.
- Follow on work from the NSF transporter award, which ended in June 2025.
In their words
“Our mission is to replace the toxic areas of petrochemistry with biotechnology.”
Eric Steen, co-founder and CEO, SynBioBeta, 2019 · Interview
“We are a full-stack company, we do A to Z in terms of designing the organism through final purified product.”
Eric Steen, SynBioBeta, 2019 · Interview
“With this manufacturing run, we are able to provide samples of high quality malonic acid to customers and partners.”
Eric Steen, Berkeley Lab announcement, March 2, 2015 · Company release
“The current petrochemical processes used to manufacture specialty chemicals like malonic, glycolic and glyceric acids, are not only expensive but they also have significant health, safety and environmental concerns.”
Jeffrey Dietrich, co-founder and CTO, grants announcement, March 11, 2019 · Company release
“They’re not waiting for somebody else to do something interesting with this.”
Steve Slome, analyst, NexantECA, to Chemical & Engineering News, September 2024 · Independent
“The transaction allows Dober to meet the strong growth for Soltellus in Agronomy and enables Lygos to focus on our partnerships and growth opportunities in Home Care, Personal Care and Hygiene.”
Rich Weber, chief business officer, Dober acquisition release, February 2026 · Partner release
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordSBIR.gov company portfolio for Lygos, Inc.
- Public recordNSF awards 1345920, 1456071 and 2449589
- Public recordForm D filings of Lygos, Inc., CIK 0001518601
- Public recordTermination of merger agreement, FSI and Lygos
- Public recordPatents assigned to Lygos, Inc.
- Public recordFDA 510(k) and PMA, ClinicalTrials.gov, NIH RePORTER, PubMed
- Public recordFirst Bioprocess Pilot-Scale Production of Malonic Acid
- IndependentLygos plans commercial plant for biobased chemicals
- IndependentLygos gets funding for malonic acid
- IndependentWebster County to welcome biorefinery
- IndependentLygos Launches Soltellus Polymers for Skin and Hair
- InterviewA modern-day David-and-Goliath: Lygos CEO Eric Steen
- Partner releaseDober acquires Lygos’ Soltellus agronomy and water treatment businesses
- CompanyLygos and CJ BIO biorefinery complex announcement
- CompanyLygos technical milestone with NREL
- CompanyLygos Awarded Three Innovation Research Grants
- CompanyRetention Capacity: Why We Use SAP in Absorbent Hygiene Products, and site pages
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
