Novel enzyme used in carbohydrate modification produced in partnership with sugar reduction company.

Biocatalysts collaborated with a company working in the field of sugar reduction to scale up a novel enzyme technology. The aim was to optimise the fermentation and downstream processing of an enzyme for the modification of carbohydrates. Our customer needed a company to take their small-scale enzyme process through to full production scale. It was essential that the organisation had the technical knowledge, and capacity to successfully optimise the scale-up of both the fermentation and downstream processes in less than 10 months and be able to produce the enzyme at a scale that would meet their product activity and quality requirements.

The project started with a detailed transfer of technical knowledge; the whole enzyme manufacturing process being broken down into its salient parts. A project plan was then developed incorporating key milestones to ensure the project stayed on track to hit the customer’s timelines.

To achieve this tight timeframe collaboration between both company’s technical teams was imperative. There were monthly meetings during the scale up from 3L through to 750L to review all data and to work through any issues that arose. During the optimisation process we worked with the customer to define the product specification ensuring the enzyme fitted their manufacturing process including regulatory, and logistical requirements. Once these were all finalised, we commenced with the production of a commercial scale batch in the 10m³ fermenter.

Working closely with the customer we were able to take a novel enzyme from small scale production producing millilitres, to a fully optimised commercial scale process capable of producing tonnes of enzyme product and delivering it to the customer in less than 10 months.

Biocatalysts Ltd partner with many companies from cutting edge start-ups to multinational organisations, all are looking for a company that can support them in their development of novel enzymes and fermented proteins to drive their innovation pipelines forward. We have built a vertically integrated model specifically to develop and optimise the manufacturing process of novel enzymes, fermented proteins, and pharmaceutical biocatalysts to achieve maximum expression yields at commercial volumes whilst maintaining the required quality and activity of the protein being produced.