Robotic plant production startup Phyllome joins UQ, Pharmacare to develop functional foods

Pharmacare, the owner of such brands as Nature's Way and Bioglan, is teaming up with robotic plant production biotech Phyllome and the University of Queensland (UQ) as they develop the next generation of functional foods based on therapeutic peptides.

The collaboration is backed by a $1.2 million Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage grant, and is aimed at creating plant-based consumable products with compounds that could relieve pain, reduce cholesterol levels or suppress appetite.

The project builds on decades of research at UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience studying cyclic peptides. This includes cyclotides, a class of naturally occurring circular proteins discovered by UQ Professor David Craik, which can be engineered to deliver specific health benefits.

"We've developed the ability to program plants to produce specific therapeutic peptides," says Professor Craik, whose discovery of cyclotides originated from studying African traditional medicine where women drank tea from specific plants to aid childbirth.

"This creates an entirely new category of functional foods where the therapeutic compound is grown directly into the food product."

The UQ-Pharmacare-Phyllome partnership represents the first commercial application of Professor Craik's cyclotide technology in functional foods.

Phyllome's robotic controlled-environment facility in Sydney, which currently produces packaged vegetable goods, will be adapted to cultivate plants containing these bioactive peptides. The company's investor register includes Tenacious Ventures, GCC Corporate Group, Pan Ventures and Singapore's Star Rise Venture

The company claims its artificial intelligence-driven growing systems ensure consistent production while maintaining environmental sustainability. The project will utilise plant transformation techniques to reprogram crops to produce therapeutic peptides while maintaining their nutritional value.

"Plant-based production offers a natural solution to meet this growing demand, producing therapeutic compounds directly within food products rather than through synthetic manufacturing processes," says Phyllome CEO and founder Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin.

"This approach aligns with consumer demand for natural, sustainable health solutions as we're essentially creating foods that function as medicine, produced using our existing automated robotic growing infrastructure."

PharmaCare Laboratories, a private Australian company known for numerous supplement and wellness products in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) segment, will be the project's distribution and marketing partner to support a potential commercial rollout of the functional foods developed.