Maxygen's Whole Genome Shuffling Technologies Open New Product Areas In Fermentation and Vaccines
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Maxygen, Inc. (Nasdaq: MAXY - news) today announced dramatic advances in its ability to adapt entire microbial genomes for commercial uses. In a report published today in the journal Nature, Maxygen scientists describe the use of its proprietary whole genome shuffling (WGS) technologies to develop new bacterial strains with increased capacity to produce a commercial polyketide antibiotic. This study was facilitated by a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Technology Program (NIST-ATP).
Maxygen's WGS technologies allow the improvement of microbial strains for use in fermentation and bioprocessing, and extend methods previously applied by Maxygen to develop products for its existing commercial partners in pharmaceutical manufacturing and scale-up. The new technologies should allow more rapid development of bacterial strains having increased yield, and more efficient synthesis of high value molecules, such as antibiotics, anti-cancer compounds and nutritional supplements. They may also be useful for the development of novel or improved clinical products, including new vaccines against bacterial diseases.
``The development of these novel whole genome recombination technologies will allow us to address substantial new product opportunities,'' said Alan Shaw, Ph.D., President of Maxygen's Chemicals business unit. ``Many products are created using fermentation processes including drugs, foodstuffs and beverages. However, in most cases it has taken years, or even decades, to identify bacterial strains that can produce products at commercial scale. Maxygen has now shown that we can use our whole genome recombination technologies to potentially develop significant production improvements in a period of months. This technology has the potential to create efficiencies in the fermentation and natural products industries, industries that have relied by and large on incremental advances to classical strain improvement techniques for over thirty years.''
``This technology represents an important expansion in Maxygen's MolecularBreeding(TM) directed evolution technologies, and is applicable to multiple Maxygen business units,'' said Russell Howard, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Maxygen. ``Whether applied for enhancing immunogenicity, manufacturing efficiency or to create novel therapeutics or to generate next-generation vaccines against bacterial pathogens, whole genome shuffling provides us with a broad platform from which to create and improve both therapeutic and industrial products.''
Maxygen already has amassed a substantial intellectual property estate with respect to such whole genome improvement technologies. U.S. patents 6,117,679, 6,287,861, 6,287,862, 6,335,198 and 6,309,883 and European patent EPO 934999B1 describe methods of in vivo recombination, and whole genome recombination useful for strain improvement. The patented in vivo recombination technology includes methods of recombining nulcleic acids with host chromosome sequences and broadly covers the use of artificial chromosomes in such methods. As a group, these patents appear to cover a variety of methods being pursued by others as alternatives to traditional strain improvement. Additional Maxygen patents pending in the United States, Europe and other countries specifically cover protoplast fusion methods of whole-genome recombination.
Maxygen, Inc. headquartered in Redwood City, California, is focused on creating novel products using its integrated proprietary technologies for human therapeutics and industrial applications. Maxygen's technologies bring together advances in molecular biology and protein modification to create novel biotechnology products. Maxygen has over 19 strategic collaborations with industry leaders and a pipeline of over 40 potential products, including fourteen in development. Maxygen currently owns or has licenses to over 45 U.S. patents relating to its MolecularBreeding(TM) directed molecular evolution technologies, and to over 450 patent applications filed worldwide.
This news release contains forward-looking statements about our research and business prospects, including those relating to: the ability of whole genome shuffling to improve microbial strains and/or therapeutic and industrial products; the character of such improvement; the speed with which we can obtain such improvement and the potential commercial applications of the improved strains and/or products. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause results to differ materially from those set forth in these statements. Among other things these risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the inherent uncertainties of a new technology; changing research and business priorities of Maxygen and our ability to develop product candidates with desired characteristics. These and other risk factors are more fully discussed in our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000, including under the caption ``Risk Factors,'' and in our other periodic SEC reports, all of which are available from Maxygen at www.maxygen.com. Maxygen disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement contained in this release as a result of new information or future events or developments. Maxygen and MolecularBreeding are trademarks of Maxygen. |
