Team:CSU Fort Collins/Entrepreneurship

COLORADO STATE
UNIVERSITY iGEM

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Entrepreneurship

In previous years, iGEM had an entrepreneurship track. Teams were encouraged to build projects and focus around commercializing their work. For 2015, we're removing the track and introducing an award for entrepreneurship.

Note

In order to be considered for the Best Supporting Entrepreneurship award, you must fill out this page.

The Best Supporting Entrepreneurship award recognizes exceptional effort to build a business case and commercialize an iGEM project. This award is open to all teams to show that entrepreneurship is something all teams can aspire to do with their project. This award can go to an new project, or to a previous project that a team aimed to commercialize. Have you filed a provisional patent on your project/device/process? Have you raised money to build and ship products? Have you pitched your idea to investors and received money? Complete the entrepreneurship section on the 2015 Judging form and tell us what you did. As always in iGEM, the aim is to impress the judges!

Summary
This year CSU iGEM has been working towards production of trans-zeatin via the MEP pathway in E. coli. Trans-zeatin is normally extracted from plant tissue which decreases yield and drives up the cost. Trans-zeatin is a useful product because it is a plant hormone that increases lateral bud growth. Sigma-Aldrich currently sells trans-zeatin for $5,000 a gram. By using frying oil as our feed we are able to significantly decrease cost. We have filed a provisional patent on this process as we believe that this would be easily commercialized.

Company Description
Our company will begin producing trans-zeatin from E. coli and once this process has become stabilized we will be able to work on Research and Development in order to produce more production; be it terpenoids from the MEP pathway or more related to plant growth.

Market Analysis
While there are a few companies that currently sell trans-zeatin, it is all from plant tissue extraction. Due to our lowered costs of production we will be able to produce trans-zeatin and sell it at a lower cost but still maintain profit.

Financial Projections
In order to produce trans-zeatin at a low cost we will need a production facility. We have come up with the idea to develop a solar panel heated warm room in order to reduce energy costs. Because we are able to grow E. coli off of frying oil this will eliminate the cost of growth media and glucose. We have a significant amount of startup costs due to the expense of the equipment used in our process. We will need items such as large bioreactors, an HPLC, an LC-MS, an autoclave, etc.

Costumers
We believe that the industrialization of trans-zeatin production will reduce the cost at which it is available for use in research. We also believe that once we can produce zeatin in large enough amounts we would be able to sell it in the agricultural industry.

As students who will be graduating from CSU this year a majority of our team is contemplating the idea of taking some time off before continuing to graduate school and developing this idea as a startup business. There is a significant amount of work to be done in order to develop this business plan and idea before we will be able to turn our project idea into a successful business but we are well on our way into development.