Leaders on a Mission - Eric Steen, CEO Lygos, Episode 21

In todays episode I am joined by Eric Steen, Biotechnology entrepreneur, and CEO of Lygos, an innovative biotechnology company, creating healthy and sustainable chemicals. Eric reflects on his upbringing, and the influence of his parents in creating a foundation and set of principles based upon reusing natural resources and sustainability. Eric talks about the time at UC Berkeley, and leveraging the new biotechnology toolkits, and the vision for setting up Lygos, to produce  novel and sustainable chemicals. He outlines the development of the technology platform overcoming the challenges in producing malonic acid, via fermentation process, something that had previously not been done before. He spoke about the range of organic acids, and molecules that Lygos can produce, and about plans for scale up and growth. He highlighted the challenges of current malonic acid production, and how he envisages a future of healthy and sustainable chemicals, driven by the consumer demanding chemicals and materials made sustainably from nontoxic processes