LanthaGen Bio: A Greener Approach to Capturing Rare Earth Elements

With less than 1% of rare earth metals recycled globally, the technology that powers our daily lives faces an uncertain future. Rare earth elements are essential for everything from the high-strength magnets in electric vehicle motors to the precision components in smartphones and clean-energy turbines. With the need for a dependable supply chain more critical than ever, synthetic biology pioneers LanthaGen Bio are building a blueprint for a more sustainable future.

A start-up based at Sister’s Renold Innovation Hub, LanthaGen Bio is on a mission to help countries onshore their critical mineral supply through synthetic biology, using engineered microbes to selectively capture rare earth elements. By harnessing these highly selective biological tools, their vision is to secure domestic supply chains by ‘re-mining’ from existing waste solutions, extracting value from growing waste streams while avoiding the environmental costs of traditional mining.

We sat down with the founders of LanthaGen Bio to discuss their journey from a university project to a leader in bioremediation – using living organisms to actively recover high-value materials from industrial waste.

Read on to hear what they had to say.

Where did the inspiration for LanthaGen Bio come from, and what makes the company unique?

LanthaGen Bio: “LanthaGen Bio grew from a ‘Friday afternoon project’ at The University of Manchester, where a team of synthetic biologists sought to create a carbon-neutral way to recover rare earth elements from UK waste.

“We don't have huge mining facilities for rare earth elements in the UK – they're largely based in China, South America, and Australia. That’s why we set out to develop technology that selectively extracts these metals and massively reduces the carbon offset by using UK waste. By using open-access computational chemistry software and data, we were able to engineer specific biomolecules that selectively capture those elements. Our first simulations showed that our biomolecules are 10,000 times more likely to capture rare earth elements over common contaminants.”

Tell us more about your journey so far – from The University of Manchester to Sister to your next chapter.

LanthaGen Bio: “LanthaGen Bio transitioned from theory to reality after securing £75,000 in philanthropic funding from Unit M, which is part of The University of Manchester, allowing us to validate our ‘biomagnets’ through successful experimental validation trials with external collaborators across the UK.

“This gave us the traction and credibility to secure £1.1 million in non-dilutive funding from the German Government’s SPRIND agency. Having access to these funds kickstarted our computational work, team work, and all of our meetings, which are run out of Sister. Now, we are exploring lab space and making our first hires.”

What’s your vision for the future of sustainable rare earth metal research?

LanthaGen Bio: “There is no one good route that can extract all the value from waste. We envision moving away from the ‘one-size-fits-all’ brute force methods that currently dominate the industry and cause significant value loss.

“Instead, we see a synergy where traditional chemical processes work alongside our highly selective technology to efficiently recover rare earth elements from electronic waste and return them to the supply chain. Beyond bioremediation, the bigger picture goal is about reducing the global reliance on destructive extraction and metal separation processes, which has a significant negative impact on indigenous communities in places like Canada and Australia.”

How important are collaboration and partnerships to what LanthaGen Bio and other businesses in the sector are trying to achieve?

LanthaGen Bio: “Collaboration across the triple helix of government policy, private sector, and academia is vital because no single entity or country can solve these complex global challenges alone. There’s no singular solution to extracting all the value, so if there's no collaboration we're not going to find an economically viable route to recapture value and channel it back into the economy. For example, we currently have two active projects in collaboration with Principal Investigators at The University of Manchester, and access to their wealth of knowledge and instrumentation is hugely transformational for us.”

Tell us what social impact means to LanthaGen Bio.

LanthaGen Bio: “As founders from diverse backgrounds, we have embedded social mobility into the company’s DNA.

“We are using science as a tool for social mobility, increasing accessibility, creating jobs and vital post-doctoral opportunities – ensuring a living wage and flexible working hours. As we build our company, it’s important to us that things are kept equitable and that our team feels like our technology is giving back.”

What makes Manchester the right place for LanthaGen Bio to innovate and grow?

LanthaGen Bio: “We love Manchester. Our CEO and Co-Founder Sahara has been here for 10 years now, and in a nice full-circle moment, the Renold building (where Sister is based) was actually where she had her first chemistry exam ten years ago.

“There is so much opportunity for growth here, and we want more people to see the potential of the North West and for the region to retain its companies. We don't want to just jump ship and go somewhere else.”

What have you loved most about working in the Sister co-working space?

LanthaGen Bio: “For us it’s been the wealth of opportunities that emerge just from networking alone. Every conversation is an opportunity to pick something up from someone who's been there, done that, and has a contact that can help us. Everyone is also facing similar challenges, so it's really nice to have that community feel. Going forward, we will definitely keep our base at Sister to maximise the network we have on our doorstep.”

What’s next for LanthaGen Bio? How will the company evolve over the next year?

LanthaGen Bio: “The next chapter is about aiming to progress through the subsequent challenge years of SPRIND and securing the next round of funding. We're completely aware that we've got a lot of traction around this, and this is a really good time to start raising. We’re also keeping our scale-up journey front of mind, and that's why we want to stay in the North West, because we believe that it has the best capabilities when we take it one step further and start scaling the tech.”

Thank you to the LanthaGen Bio team for sharing your story with us! We can’t wait to see your exciting next chapter unfold.

Feature Image Credit: Felix Adler