A novel plant enzyme for enhancing the viscosity or hydrophobicity of cellulosic materials

HTG Microscopy of cellulose pulp after bonding of a fluorescent ‘cargo’ (Photo credit- Lenka Franková, UoE)

Challenge

Cellucomp produce cellulosic materials including their proprietary material Curran®. The company want to expand their product portfolio by offering paper-based packaging materials with improved strength and water repellent properties.

Edinburgh University holds a patent on applications of an enzyme called HTG which can bond sugars to fibres, potentially including Curran.

Solution

Funding from IBioIC enabled Cellucomp to work with Professor Stephen Fry of the Cell wall group at University of Edinburgh to explore whether cross-linking fibres using University of Edinburgh’s patented technology could improve the properties of Curran/paper pulp  for use in packaging applications

Stephen Fry’s team used their patented application of using the HTG plant enzyme to bond modified sugars to cellulose fibres provided by Cellucomp.

Cellucomp used the modified sugars and enzyme provided by UoE to cross-link their paper-based products. They then tested these for various physical characteristics including strength, wet strength and water uptake. These were compared to chemically cross-linked fibres.

Outcome

Proof of concept was achieved. Cross linking increased the wet strength of paper pulp samples and samples of paper pulp combined with Curran opening up this new material for further packaging applications.

The academic partners and Cellucomp also spent time in each other’s labs, enabling effective knowledge transfer.