Amyris to Launch Biopharma Platform

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AmyrisAmyris has announced plans to launch µPharm (microPharm) Discovery and Production Platform, which the renewable products company says will provide the pharmaceutical industry with an integrated discovery and production process for therapeutic compounds for which a natural source is scarce or unavailable, or for which chemical synthesis is not cost-effective.

Building on Amyris’ creation of a strain for the cost-effective production of the antimalarial drug precursor artemisinic acid and its low-cost industrial synthetic biology platform, Amyris's µPharm platform will add the ability to generate chemical diversity relevant to therapeutic target identification.

The µPharm platform is founded on Amyris’ proprietary technologies for microbial strain engineering, including: a set of automated multiplex genome editing tools for high-efficiency installation and optimization of biosynthetic pathways; high-throughput screening capabilities for the identification of strains producing compounds of interest and development of strains that produce such compounds at commercially-relevant levels; and proven industrial-scale fermentation and recovery infrastructure for reliable, predictable manufacturing of compounds from renewable feedstock.

Amyris’ renewable specialty chemicals are produced from plant sugars, and include compounds for consumer care, performance materials, fuels and lubricants derived from a class of molecules called isoprenoids. Isoprenoids are a diverse family of structurally complex chemicals found in nature, and include molecules with a range of pharmacological properties, including antimalarial, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer activities.

The µPharm platform will use isoprenoids to enable both the discovery and industrial production of a wide range of molecules of interest for the pharmaceutical industry, Amyris says.

Last month Amyris announced plans to launch its first industrial cleaning products through US AutoForce and US Lubricants, divisions of US Venture.

 

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