Providing strain development services to partners
In recent years, scientists have increasingly sought to bioengineer microbes for the production of a wide variety of chemical products, from commodity chemicals to food and feed ingredients. These bioprocesses often aim to displace synthesis routes that rely upon petroleum-derived chemical processing. But in order to do so, industrial bioprocesses must be extremely efficient in their use of both raw material and capital infrastructure. Microbia PE has developed a unique approach to address such strain and process development challenges.
We do it by integrating high-throughput biological methods with profiling sciences and our proprietary association analysis technologies. This approach enables us to identify unforeseen metabolic and physiological limitations, thereby attaining advancements not possible by simply optimizing specific biosynthetic genes.
Our tools are broadly applicable across the microbial world—spanning yeasts, mycelial fungi, and bacteria—and we have had collaborations involving pharmaceuticals, feed ingredients, food ingredients, and biofuels.
To date, we have established 14 partnerships with eight companies, and two of the strains we've helped develop have already been commercialized. Our service partners include the following companies:
- Biocon, India's leading biotechnology enterprise, sought our assistance to improve the productivity and economic viability of a developmental fermentation process.
- DuPont is collaborating with us through its Central Research & Development organization to develop an economically viable biomanufacturing process for a chemical currently manufactured from petrochemical-based raw materials. This relationship started in late 2005.
- Novus International is a global leader in the animal feed and health industries, with a product portfolio including Alimet®, Santoquin®, and Acidomix®. Microbia PE has been collaborating with Novus since 2003 to develop novel biomanufacturing technology.
- Ranbaxy Laboratories, India's largest pharmaceutical company, has collaborated twice with Microbia PE since 2003 to improve two of its fermentation processes. An improved strain developed under one of these collaborations exhibited an 89% improvement in productivity and has been validated for manufacturing use.
Peter Yorgey, Ph.D.
Director, Service Partnerships
partnerships@microbia-pe.com