Turning bark into biopharmaceuticals

Although a casual observer just sees the bark on a tree, a lumber expert might envision the potential for boards inside, thinking of the bark largely as waste. In many cases, bark does turn into waste in the logging industry.

That’s lots of waste, because bark can account for up to 15% of a tree’s weight, and “only a fraction of this is currently being utilised, primarily for landscaping or for energy; the rest is left at the harvest or handling site to naturally decompose,” according to Sumanth Ranganathan, Dr.-Ing, a biochemical engineer at Scion, a research institute in Rotorua, New Zealand, and his colleagues. For some trees, though, that wasted bark is a potential treasure-trove of biopharmaceuticals, from anti-inflammatories to cancer-fighting drugs.

In a commercial forest in New Zealand, more than 90% of the trees are Monterey pines (Pinus radiata), which are known for fast growth, sometimes as much as two meters in a year. Each year, the country’s logging industry produces about 2.5 million metric tons of bark. Ranganathan’s team envisions feeding that into a bark-based biorefinery.

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Source: GEN