Codexis Achieves Development Milestone in Research Agreement with Schering-Plough

13-Sep-2006

Codexis, Inc. announced it has achieved an important development milestone under a research agreement with Schering-Plough Corporation. The objective of the collaboration with Schering-Plough is to rapidly generate a novel biocatalytic process to produce a key intermediate for an undisclosed human therapeutics compound. This program is based on Codexis' proprietary MolecularBreeding pharmaceutical process re-engineering platform, and is expected to reduce manufacturing costs and environmental waste in the final production process.

Codexis' partnerships draw upon the company's expertise and track record in applying its proprietary technology to high-value pharmaceutical products to improve their purity profile and reduce manufacturing time, cost and waste. According to the company, its MolecularBreeding protein and strain engineering technology platform creates superior biological catalysts (biocatalysts) - either enzymes or fermentation strains - crafted specifically for cutting-edge chemical processes that can enable pharmaceutical process development, shorten process development timelines, dramatically improve existing manufacturing processes and increase chemical development productivity. Codexis estimates that its platform technology can reduce cost of goods by 40 to 70 percent and capital expenditures by over 35 percent.

Codexis' platform technology begins with the selection of genes or genomes with DNA sequence diversity. These gene or genomic variants are then subjected to a proprietary technique that recombines, or "shuffles," the DNA. The resulting library encoding for novel biocatalysts is screened for those possessing desirable and improved properties. This process is repeated several times until the resulting enzymes or strains meet or exceed the target performance.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/57849/codexis-achieves-development-milestone-in-research-agreement-with-schering-plough.html