Gunter Festel joins the Ger­man Biotech Com­pany CASCAT

The CAS­CAT GmbH is a chem­ic­al and bio­tech­no­logy com­pany estab­lished in 2014 as spin-off of the Tech­nic­al Uni­ver­sity of Munich in Straub­ing, Bav­aria, and headed by the two share­hold­ers André Pick and Jochen Schmid. Research­ing the field of syn­thet­ic reac­tion cas­cades by use of chemo(enzymatic) path­ways, CAS­CAT strives to real­ize nov­el pro­cess routes towards chem­ic­al pro­duc­tion. There­fore, CAS­CAT act­ively col­lab­or­ates with renowned aca­dem­ic insti­tu­tions and tech­no­logy insti­tutes to stay at the fore­front of the tech­no­lo­gic­al devel­op­ment. The engage­ment of Gunter Festel as share­hold­er and non-exec­ut­ive dir­ect­or strengthens the busi­ness devel­op­ment activ­it­ies and sup­ports future fin­an­cing rounds of CAS­CAT. As a Found­ing Angel, Gunter Festel, a suc­cess­ful entre­pren­eur, has co-foun­ded more than 10 bio­tech­no­logy com­pan­ies in Ger­many and Switzer­land. He was CEO of Butalco which was sold to the French com­pany Lesaf­fre in 2014. Butalco’s tech­no­logy for the pro­duc­tion of bio­fuels and bio­chem­ic­als enables the use of waste mater­i­al and thus helps towards solv­ing the ​“food vs. fuel” dilemma.

ABOUT CAS­CAT

CAS­CAT GmbH is a bio­tech­no­logy com­pany work­ing in the field of syn­thet­ic bio­tech­no­logy and sus­tain­able chem­istry. Its founders have extens­ive exper­i­ence in devel­op­ing and optim­iz­ing nov­el syn­thet­ic pro­cess routes gained over sev­er­al years. Espe­cially the adap­tion of enzymat­ic reac­tions towards indus­tri­al pro­cess con­di­tions and the com­bin­a­tion of biocata­lysts with chem­ic­al cata­lysts is the key com­pet­ence of CAS­CAT. The pro­cess devel­op­ment is car­ried out in the field of fine, basic and bulk chem­ic­als, as well as phar­ma­ceut­ic­al pre­curs­ors. By work­ing on vari­ous research pro­jects inde­pend­ently as well as with indus­tri­al part­ners, CAS­CAT has developed pro­pri­et­ary pro­cess routes for fun­da­ment­al build­ing blocks from renew­able car­bo­hydrates. CAS­CAT is aim­ing to com­mer­cial­ise its pro­pri­et­ary pro­cess routes, which enables to obtain most atom effi­cient con­ver­sion from renew­able resources. These solu­tions are suit­able for the use in the chem­ic­al and phar­ma­ceut­ic­al industry as well as to devel­op cus­tom­ised solu­tions based on their pro­pri­et­ary or com­plete nov­el routes. Source: CAS­CAT GmbH