LARS-UNO LARSSON'S BIOMIMETIC CAPSTONE
“We’ve come back full circle to realise the power and importance of nature. The question we like to ask in our thinking is ‘what would nature do? We need to keep an open mind that nature, as an engineer, was here first” says Lars-Uno.
Biomimetics are considered the pathway between biology and engineering. Biomimicry literally means imitation of the living. Biomimetics is the interdisciplinary field whereby principles from engineering, chemistry and biology are applied to the synthesis of materials, synthetic systems or machines that have functions that mimic biological processes. Successful biomimetics take solutions from nature and apply to human engineering. The most notable examples being the design of the front of a Japanese bullet train based on a kingfisher’s bill (engineers were able to reduce the sonic boom effect while increasing the speed of the train), armadillo-based backpacks, stiletto shoes based on bird bone structures and swimming suits based on sharks. Many do not know that the French structural designer, Gustave Eiffel, designed the tower for the World Trade Fair in Paris in 1889 from the research on the femur (the human thighbone).
Over 130 years later the world’s tallest building, the design of the Burj Khalifa was inspired by the trifold footprint of the desert flower, the spider lily. Other examples include batteries developed from studies on eels, internal climate control systems from termite mounds, even the idea for Velcro came to inventor George de Mestral noticed that burdock burrs clung to his clothes. In 2018 Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their revolutionary work harnessing biomimetics.
I personally first came across biomimetics when at the McLaren Technology Centre, the home of the Formula One team. I was chatting to the McLaren Automotive chief designer’s office full of animal shapes. When asking him why he had animal artefacts everywhere he told me it was inspiring him in terms of curves and aesthetics of the McLaren Formula One and road cars…
I had not then thought about biomimetics until I spoke with Swedish entrepreneur Lars-Uno Larsson. Lars-Uno has had two major moments that have defined his career but have also made a positive impact on the world. His keystone phase in life, a time when Lars-Uno won multiple awards for his pioneering work and created a company that would end up being NASDOQ listed. His Capstone phase in life has been characterised by biomimetics. Throughout Lars-Uno’s life, you will have never found him far from nature, in both location and ethos. Both major moments for Lars-Uno are connected him being open to new ideas and then acting on his gut feel:
“When you know it’s right you really know” says Lars-Uno.
Lars-Uno was born in Sweden in July 1944. In 1988, Lars-Uno was looking for his next project. He heard on the radio in Paris about Orphan drugs in the US. An orphan drug is a pharmaceutical agent developed to treat medical conditions which, because they are so rare, would not be profitable to produce without government assistance. A disease or disorder is defined as rare in Europe when it affects less than 1 in 200,000 citizens.
At that time, drug therapies for such diseases were rarely developed. Lars-Uno had heard of the passing of laws around the 1983 Orphan Drug Act in the US. These drugs are called “orphan” because under normal market conditions the pharmaceutical industry has little interest in developing and marketing products intended for only a small number of patients.
The Orphan Drug Act provided manufacturers with three main incentives: firstly, federal funding of grants and contracts to undertake clinical trials of orphan products; secondly a tax credit of 50 percent of clinical testing costs; and thirdly, an exclusive right to market the orphan drug for seven years from the date of marketing… this provided incentives for pharma companies to develop drugs for orphan diseases.
Lars-Uno had a sense to follow up on the hunch and realised there was no such organisation in Europe. He was integral in bringing Orphan Drug legislative change across European parliaments. Lars-Uno built the company, Swedish Orphan International AB, into an internationally recognized organization specializing in the development and distribution of pharmaceuticals for the treatment of rare disorders. It led to the reduction in suffering for millions of people with orphan diseases. Lars-Uno received several awards, among all, the International Humanitarian Award 1998 and the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Sweden 2002.
Swedish Orphan International was acquired by a Swedish financial consortium 2004, merged with Biovitrum 2009, and still trades on the NASDAQ under the name Swedish Orphan Biovitrum (also known as SOBI).
“I was especially proud of my work through the 16 years around orphan drugs. I feel it was work that will survive us all and it was most fulfilling to see people that wouldn’t have gotten help, receive treatment to improve their lives” said Lars-Uno.
A LIMINAL STATE: WALKING IN THE SWEDISH WOODS
Being a serial entrepreneur, in 2004 Lars-Uno was thinking about his next project. He spent a month walking in the woods back at home in Sweden, everyday enjoying the state of being in between ideas. He was enjoying opening his mind again to new ideas and signals. His radar was up in search of the next global market segment not fully commercially explored.
He noticed a newsletter from the Trend Letter about the unusual scientific field of Biomimetics. He instantly knew that was going to be his future. He liked to fact the area was evolving, the commercial potential and saw there was a need for commercially-minded structures for Biomimetic programs. His gut feeling was that biomimetics could be as equally as important for the world as orphan drugs.
“I could see that biomimetics could make an impact on every sector” said Lars-Uno. “Nature is millions of years of survival in the making. Nature-based innovation is very powerful. I immediately loved it as an inspired form of science, that a natural entity could be captured and employed to improve human lives. I immediately knew ‘this is it”.
Lars-Uno cites a book that was out at the time also called The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures. The book was written by Swedish-American entrepreneur Frans Johansson where he introduced the concept of the Medici Effect, which involves innovation that happens when disciplines and ideas intersect…
CAPSTONE PHASE: NATURAL CONCEPTS
So in 2004 Lars-Uno founded Swedish Biomimetics 3000® with the company mission to fund and foster translation research and development of biomimetic concepts until they are considered commercial candidates. The company had 30 investors from Sweden back the company.
Lars-Uno named the company after listening to a professor explain how science had influenced society in 1000AD, 2000AD: “I started to think about what science would look like in the year 3000. 15 years later we are pretty much there already”!
One of the first projects sponsored by the company was with Leeds University in the UK. A team of scientists were interested in the deadly defence system of a small African beetle. The Bombardier beetle defends itself by spraying toxic steam, blasting it ten times is own body length. The beetle is able to mobilise itself into a toxic gas machine gun. The attacker when gets sprayed makes it groggy and so the beetle can walk away. The scientists took the beetle’s spray mechanism to develop a new generation of technology.
Professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory, Andy McIntosh led the research team, said: "Nobody had studied the beetle from a physics and engineering perspective as we did, and we didn't appreciate how much we would learn from it."
The potential applications of the beetle-inspired engineering is vast. From next gen sprays to inhalers, needle-free injections, fire extinguishers and from powerful fuel injection systems to exhausts. The new technology allowed droplet size, temperature and velocity to be closely controlled, "allowing advancements in a variety of areas where the properties of the mist is critical". The resulting technology is environmentally friendly, as it uses a water-based spray system in place of the "damaging propellants found in traditional aerosol sprays". The research team and SB3000 received the outstanding contribution to innovation and technology title at the Times Higher Education awards in London.
The company has reached a licensing agreement on the technology leading to many companies and organisations from consumer product and automotive manufacturers to the Swedish Energy Agency are interested in the spray technology. SB3000 are working in collaboration with researchers at Lund University Sweden to develop the technique that more efficiently removes harmful oxides of nitrogen, NOx, from the exhaust of diesel engines. The technology on the spray technology in the future could be used in every household and business in the future…
The second strand of SB3000 is the application to pharma manufacturing:
“Pharma manufacturing has been the same for fifty years” says Lars-Uno.
In 2011, he was invited to California to speak at a conference about precision and personalised medicine. He was introduced to a PhD student fascinated by the assembly line system. Lars-Uno instantly saw the potential of what the student was working on. Traditionally the bottleneck in drug production is the discovery part. The extensive testing of combinations of compounds pre-clinical research let alone the then phases of clinical studies and approvals with the likes of the FDA. However, with the development of computer processing power and artificial intelligence, the ability to run simulations around billions of compound combinations before reducing to a shortlist to move to synthesis and purification phases is shortening the speed at which new drugs in the future could be discovered. It has meant a new potential bottleneck, manufacturing. The COVID-19 pandemic has made countries around the world realise they do not want to be reliant on other countries for the production of vaccines and medicines. The future for many countries and companies is local manufacturing in smaller amounts rather than a larger assembly line in one place. Localised production of medicines could be an entirely new model for the industry. SB3000 believes its system would enable drugs to get to market quicker, without the need for solvents or chemicals in the process. One issue has been on traditional assembly lines, if a sensor identifies something is wrong in the system, it needs to stop, create feedback and rectify the issue. Often 4-5 months of entire productions have to be thrown away. SB3000 biomimetic discovery has developed a ground breaking solid phase manufacturing synthesis solution named µLOT®, aimed at replacing the expensive and environmentally damaging batch processing, which currently is being widely used in manufacturing medicinal products. The Company is initially focusing on the continuous manufacture of peptides, as the present batch process is highly toxic, expensive, can be of variable quality and is inflexible. SB3000 has offices and technical teams in Norfolk UK, Lund Sweden and Copenhagen Denmark. The company has ongoing partnership programmes with a variety of organisations including major pharma and contract manufacturers. The likes of Nova Nordisk are interested, for the likes of their diabetes pharmaceutical products. SB3000 has the potential to be a global pioneer in green, continuous complex manufacturing of pharmaceutical products.
SB3000 is in effect the holding company with the two technologies organised into two companies, the µLOT® platform technology and μMist® the spray technology. The conscious decision was taken to focus on the two technologies to take to market. Both companies are raising finance currently, separately to accelerate their future growth.
Not that Lars-Uno is resting on his laurels... He is still passionate about the potential to extract learnings and solutions from nature. For example, he is tracking how scientists are focusing on black bears and elephants for diseases like cancer and conditions such as diabetes. He also mentions his interest in how observing tree bark and its’ complex structures has led to low energy consumption buildings in the likes of the UAE.
“What is driving me now is the thought of finding more solutions from nature for my grandchildren’s generation to benefit from. I would love to see more improvements in the automotive and health industries. My grandchildren keep me focused!” says Lars-Uno.
For more information about Swedish Biomimetics 3000 please visit https://sb3000.tech/ or to watch a video on their processes click HERE
TO READ ABOUT LARS UNO LARSSON’S LONG TIME FRIEND AND SB3000 ACTING CEO ZSOLT LAVOTHA’S COMPASSIONATE CAPITALISM CAPSTONE PLEASE CLICK HERE