The global community is facing a critical need for new, sustainable, and natural ingredients for various high-value sectors, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and fragrances. While terrestrial plant biodiversity represents a vast, untapped source of bioactive compounds, many of these resources remain inaccessible due to a lack of effective technologies to unlock their potential. Lignin, the second most abundant biopolymer on Earth after cellulose, is a prime example. As a by-product of industries like pulp and paper, it is often underutilised or treated as waste. The conventional methods used to process lignin often employ harsh conditions that destroy its valuable chemical structure, losing its potential for producing high-value compounds.
The PROSPLIGN project directly addresses this challenge by pioneering a new approach to bioprospecting utilising lignin as its feedstock. The central objective is to apply state-of-the-art methodologies to explore the bioactivity potential of lignin, an abundant and sustainable biopolymer. The project's four key objectives are:
1. To map lignin's natural biodiversity and procure a wide range of European lignin sources.
2. To design complementary chemical and enzymatic methods to selectively break down lignin and isolate novel bioactive small molecules.
3. To verify the bioactivity profiles of these molecules for use in pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and fragrance applications.
4. To propose innovative and sustainable production methods, confirming their environmental and economic viability.
PROSPLIGN’s reproducible and scalable pipeline for unlocking lignin's potential aims to create a new generation of bio-based, high-value products. This will contribute to diminishing pressure on natural resources by elevating lignin from an underutilised industrial by-product into a valuable raw material with broad high-tech applications, strengthening the competitiveness of the European bioeconomy. Beyond discovery, PROSPLIGN is designing sustainable production pathways for promising compounds, either directly or following derivatisation. Their viability will be assessed through Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA), ensuring scalability and alignment with EU Green Deal goals.
By combining chemical innovation, enzyme engineering, advanced data integration, and high-throughput bioassays, PROSPLIGN avoids the pitfalls of traditional bioprospecting. No animal testing, no invasive harvesting, and no speculative genomics are required – instead, the project valorises lignin as an overlooked biomass “mines” to deliver functional molecules. In doing so, PROSPLIGN addresses Europe’s key challenges of reducing reliance on imports, offering sustainable alternatives to fossil-based chemistry, and opening new value chains in bio-based industries.
