REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sept. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Codexis, Inc., a privately held biotechnology company, today announced it has achieved an important development milestone under a research agreement with Schering-Plough Corporation (NYSE: SGP - News).
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(TM) pharmaceutical process re-engineering platform, and is expected to reduce manufacturing costs and environmental waste in the final production process.
“The agreement with Schering-Plough was announced in March, and Codexis has quickly met the initial development milestone,” said Alan Shaw, Ph.D., Codexis President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are very pleased with this substantial progress in our collaboration and look forward to continuing to demonstrate the value of our technology to this important partner. An increasing number of worldwide pharmaceutical partners are recognizing the Codexis competitive advantage in developing rapid, efficient clinical-scale manufacturing production processes.”
Technology Background
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. Codexis has more than 15 partnerships with leading worldwide proprietary and generic pharmaceutical manufacturers.
The company’s unique MolecularBreeding(TM) 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. In addition, this platform technology can create new intellectual property opportunities, which can help extend the lifetime of drug products.
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.
About Codexis, Inc.
Codexis is a privately held biotechnology company applying proprietary synthetic chemistry technologies to create improved versions of small molecule therapeutics. Codexis’ technology enables novel process development solutions for efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly pharmaceutical manufacturing. Application of the company’s proprietary protein and strain engineering platform can also generate new intellectual property opportunities for pharmaceutical manufacturers, which may extend the drug product lifecycle. Codexis has more than 15 strategic alliances, and the company’s technology is being applied to the development of more than 20 therapeutic products worldwide. Codexis, Inc. began operations as an independent company in 2002.
NOTE: Codexis is a registered trademark and Molecular Breeding is a trademark of Codexis, Inc. For more information see www.codexis.com .
Contact: Codexis, Inc. Lyn Christenson Corporate Communications 650-298-5368 lyn.christenson@codexis.com Media: Tricia Morsch Burns McClellan 212-213-0006 tmorsch@burnsmc.com
Source: Codexis, Inc.
