ARTES Biotechnology has been actively involved in a consortium of more than 20 European partner from industry and academia. The project supported within the Sixth Framework Program of the EU aims at “Sustainable Microbial and Biocatalytic Production of Advanced Functional Materials”.

Within this consortium ARTES has successfully collaborated with AlgiPharma AS, Norway, on the development of a commercial manufacturing process for designer alginates. Alginate is a copolymer consisting of b-D-mannuronic acid (M) and a-L-guluronic acid (G) with a wide range of applications in food, paper, textile and pharmaceutical industries. The chemical and physical properties of alginates are determined by the molecular weight and the M/G composition and distribution. With recombinantly produced mannuronan C5 epimerases with defined activities, the natural diverse substrate can be used for in vitro production of alginates with specific and tailored properties for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications.

ARTES has developed three different Hansenula based production cell lines for individual epimerases and processes for high cell density cultivation for efficient production of these enzyme at high g/L scale.

The whole article

“Strain Construction and Process Development for Efficient Recombinant Production of Mannuronan C-5 Epimerases in Hansenula polymorpha”

can be uploaded here.