Strategic collaboration between BRAIN and BioSilta to co-develop high throughput enzyme expression

Zwingenberg (D) and Oulu (Fi), April 28, 2008: The White Biotech company BRAIN AG located in Zwingenberg, Germany and the biotechnology start-up BioSilta Oy of Oulu, Finland entered a strategic collaboration. The goal of this collaboration is to co-develop and optimize microwell plate based high cell density protein expression and high throughput enzyme discovery technologies through the application of the advanced cell cul-ture technology platform EnBase. In this strategic collaboration, EnBase shall be implemented into application oriented processes to accelerate enzyme discovery and improve expres-sion of enzymes used for industrial applications.

Under the terms of the agreement, BRAIN has access to the EnBase technology, characterised by enzyme based substrate delivery from a polymer layer to the cultivation medium for high throughput screening with expression libraries and commercially relevant microbial host strains. BioSilta gets access to application-relevant process developments on high throughput enzyme discovery and protein expression. “We are delighted that BRAIN as a leading European white biotech company will use our EnBase technology and within the collaboration will help us to develop our system towards application-oriented enzyme screenings”, states Russell Golson, CEO of BioSilta Oy. “We enable customers to improve the yield and the quality of simple bac-terial cultures. You can obtain up to 50 times more bacteria and consequently higher amount of recombinant proteins in the same volume with our innovative EnBase products.”

“Our EvoSolution® technology platform makes it possible to identify candidate enzymes and biocatalysts. Through the last ten years BRAIN built up a broad application knowledge in Metagenome® handling and projects for the identification and development of innovative enzymes and biocatalysts,” says Dr. Jürgen Eck, Chief Tech-nology Officer at BRAIN AG. “We are convinced that the striking EnBase technology of BioSilta will broaden our technology platform and will be of help to increase screening sensitivity leading to higher hit rates and to speed-up development cycles for industrial enzymes and biocatalysts.”