Nomad Bioscience: New Plant Biotechnology Company Founded to Focus on Biomaterials and Biopharmaceuticals

MUNICH, Germany, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- NOMAD Bioscience GmbH, Munich, Germany (NOMAD) is a private biotechnology company developing plant-made biomaterials and biopharmaceuticals that address critical unmet needs. NOMAD is developing a series of high-value products such as nanopatterned materials, protein scaffolds and templates, proteins and enzymes for important markets including biofuels, electric batteries, and biopharmaceuticals.

Nomad’s plant-based protein expression technologies are being licensed from several companies for a broad range of products. NOMAD’s proprietary technologies further improve the upstream part of the manufacturing process, but most importantly, they provide for novel downstream solutions that together with the in-licensed upstream components should result in a superior fully integrated manufacturing process for most of NOMAD’s intended products. Another major focus of NOMAD is innovations that provide for full integration of the novel process components and novel product parts into existing industrial processes/products.

NOMAD’s biomaterial pipeline consists of several selected product candidates, including plant-made cellulase enzymes (expected impact: up to 30% lower manufacturing cost of bioethanol), nanostructured polyadsorbents for affinity purification of biopharmaceuticals (low cost polyaffinity nanoparticles that replace expensive current affinity resins) and nanopatterned electrodes (batteries with improved electrochemical cycling properties and electrode capacity).

NOMAD’s pharmaceutical portfolio is focused on three ‘biosimilar’ versions of the proteins currently constituting a $15 B market: Insulin, Etanercept (Enbrel®), and Trastuzumab (Herceptin®). Our lead pharmaceutical product, Insulin, targets the US$7.5 billion Insulin market. NOMAD’s Insulin will provide an economical alternative to commercially available Insulin to better serve developing nations and meet the anticipated surge in demand. The biologics segment of the portfolio offers the longer term higher upside margins associated with pharmaceuticals while controlling the development risk through selection of early candidates from among ‘biosimilar’ products.

NOMAD intends to develop and commercialize its products in partnership with leading industry companies. The Company is focusing on rapidly expanding markets with ability and willingness to adopt new generation processes for new as well as existing products, in return for lower manufacturing costs, better ecological profiles and innovative value capture mechanisms. NOMAD’s value is tied to technology platforms that reduce capital and running costs of the plant-based production to new lows, diversified portfolio of carefully chosen and innovative candidates that address attractive markets, very fast R&D engine and very short production cycle.

The founder of NOMAD is Prof. Dr. Yuri Gleba. Prior to founding NOMAD in 2008, Dr. Gleba co-founded two other biotech companies, Icon Genetics (Germany, USA) and Phytomedics (USA). He has been the CEO of Icon Genetics since its inception in 1999 and he has brought it to a successful exit in 2006 by selling the company to Bayer AG; he continues to manage it now. In addition to being an entrepreneur, Dr. Gleba has over 30 years of experience in successful management of academic/corporate R&D projects. He is a well respected scientist and inventor as evidenced by his more than 200 research papers, books and over 30 patent families and election to six national and international academies of science. Over the next few months, NOMAD intends to build a team of managers that have the necessary qualifications.

Source: NOMAD Bioscience GmbH

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