What if we no longer needed an entire plant to obtain a single natural ingredient?

This is exactly the question driving CYTERRA. The biotech startup around co-founder and CEO Andreas Schneider is developing new ways of producing natural ingredients, beyond traditional plant extraction.

Often, the desired ingredient makes up only a tiny part of a plant. “A plant like this consists of 99 percent of something completely different”, Schneider explains. Nevertheless, the entire plant material has to be grown, harvested and processed.

Less plant. More of what matters.

The example of Ambrox shows how this can work. The molecule is used in the fragrance industry. Its natural source: whale vomit – a correspondingly rare and limited resource.

The underlying process was developed by CYTERRA’s scientists while they were still at the University of Stuttgart: it uses a different starting material to produce the same nature-identical product. This evolved into a technology ready for industrial application, which has since been sold to an industry partner. 

CYTERRA wants to change that – with alternative starting materials and new technologies.
 

Ambrox is just one example. 

In the long term, CYTERRA aims to replace more and more processes that currently rely on plant extraction. Particularly interesting are resources that are already available and currently arise as waste materials or side streams. 

Existing raw materials are to be used more efficently and purpose-grown plant resources reduced step by step.

From running past to moving in.

The fact that CYTERRA will take its next steps in Mainz also has a very personal backstory. 

LAB 1, a modern laboratory building on the Life Science Campus Mainz, was located along the team’s running route for a long time. Time and again, the route led past the building. And time and again, the same thought came up.

That thought is now becoming reality: CYTERRA plans to move into LAB 1 soon.

For Andreas Schneider Mainz is more than just a new business location. Here startups meet established companies, young founders meet industrial partners and new ideas meet a growing biotech network. This creates an environment in which young companies can grow and new technologies can find their way into application more quickly.
 

For CYTERRA this fits its own story: a young team with the ambition not simply to continue existing processes, but to rethink them fundamentally – and to change the production of natural ingredients in the long term.