Customised Enzyme Development and Manufacture

Are you looking to develop your own unique enzyme? Biocatalysts offer a flexible, unique and fully certified contract development and fermentation concept at different processing scales to a multitude of clients from diverse industries.

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It starts with Discovery.

Enzyme discovery marks the start of the journey for novel enzyme development. Our low-risk concept starts with fully understanding your needs and processes, before identifying the appropriate gene sequence to perform an initial proof-of-concept fermentation of your new enzyme.

Desk feasibility

The first stage in this process involves assessing the feasibility of the whole project, both technically and commercially. As an enzyme development and manufacturing company, our overall aim is to partner with you towards a continuous supply of your desired novel enzyme at the right price.

Our commercially focused approach from concept to routine manufacture of bespoke enzyme products enables us to mitigate risks by developing an enzyme process that is technically and commercially robust. We call this our “Design for Manufacture” approach. The effectiveness of our “Design for Manufacture” approach is highlighted here as the sample will be developed using techniques which are fully scalable. These projects are run by a team of qualified project managers together with PhD level molecular biologists and fermentation scientists.

Bioinformatics, cloning & metagenomics

Find the right enzyme for your process by using Biocatalysts’ in-house enzyme discovery technology: MetXtra™

We have our own Metagenomics Library that allows us to access an abundance of previously unexplored enzyme sequences. We have sourced our library from diverse environmental localities comprising acid/alkaline. hot/cold, arid, wet, saline etc. This is a unique and valuable resource for enzyme discovery that, combined with our novel bioinformatics platform, can rapidly identify panels of variants of your enzyme that we can synthesise and provide to you for testing.

Are you looking for an enzyme active at a higher than usual pH, have a certain substrate specificity in mind or require optimum activity at an extremely low temperature? Our metagenomic library could hold the answer!

Enzyme samples

Biocatalysts can turn a concept into a reality by delivering a sample of active, soluble enzyme along with a technical summary and specification.

Having a sample of the enzyme allows you to assess whether the enzyme does what it needs to do in your application. Typically produced from laboratory scale fermentations, this is the first step in designing a fully scalable manufacturing process for your enzyme.

This enzyme sample will be provided with an activity specification. It is also possible to develop a full activity specification if required.

The short timescale on our sample service, ultimately reduces your time to market, allowing for your unique product to be developed and begin delivering profit when you want it.

Next, we partner with you for Development.

Not all projects we undertake begin with the discovery phase. You may already have a strain and enzyme you are looking for a scale-up partner. Our focus in the development phase is on producing the maximum possible enzyme titre, purity and yield.

Fermentation development and optimisation

Now that the enzyme has been shown to perform as expected, the final stage involves making the product fit your commercial requirements.

As a leading enzyme development and manufacturing company, we believe the best conditions for the process are identified using a combination of “Design of Experiment” and state of the art parallel micro-fermentation technology at 0,5L - 3L fermentation volumes. These conditions are then confirmed on a larger scale up to 70L fermentation volume.

The overall output is a fully scalable, optimised enzyme production process which is designed for routine manufacture. At the end of this stage, the enzyme is ready to be produced at commercial volumes.

Finally, we jointly Scale-up to Manufacture.

The enzyme landscape is complex. We support our customers in ensuring their exclusive enzyme is compliant for their appropriate commercial uses.

Validation, quality control and compliance

The output of our unique enzyme development and manufacturing process is the ability to transition to routine manufacture of the custom enzyme, guaranteeing the exclusive supply of a fully validated and viable enzyme upon request in scheduled time frames required for large commercial scale projects.

This includes all the benefits of being a Biocatalysts standard enzyme product:

Assay and specification development
Formulation & stability
Supply optimisation
Regulatory support
Kosher & Halal certification
Full compliance & quality control
Application support

Routine manufacture

Routine manufacture of your exclusive and commercially viable enzyme product with all the benefits of being a Biocatalysts product.

As part of our enzyme manufacturing process the enzyme will go through an appropriate pilot scale up to 750L. We have industrial scale fermentation capacity of 2 x 10,000L and full downstream processing including spray- and freeze drying capabilities, to ensure your desired scale is achieved. The output of this stage is a product ready for market entry.

Contact an expert

Use the form below to contact a specialist about your custom enzyme requirements.