Biocatalysis

The winners of the 2010 Presidential Green Chemistry awards include Merck and Codexis for their collaborative work on a new enzyme-based process for manufacturing Januvia and LS9, Inc for its work toward developing a petroleum-like biofuel. The full list of recipients is here.

Biofuel company LS9 and Procter & Gamble announced a partnership to develop chemicals  to be used in consumer products. As has been typical with LS9 since its inception, details are sparse, but they have boldly stated that the deal is “multi-year” and includes “sustainable chemicals” in the products under consideration. LS9 has reported that it is developing methods to produce hydrocarbon products for fuels by combining the fatty acid synthesis pathway and adding its own proprietary enzymatic steps.

Onyx Scientific Ltd, Cyprotex Discovery Ltd and Glytech, a University of York Centre for Novel Agricultural Products spin-out, have formed a unique 3-way collaboration to offer new drug metabolite identification and synthesis services to the pharmaceutical industry.
All 3 organisations contribute separate skills needed in performing this service. Onyx provides synthetic and analytical chemistry services; Cyprotex contributes in vitro screening services, metabolite profiling and identification expertise; Glytech supplies proprietary enzyme screening and bioprocessing skills providing the capability to rapidly make novel metabolite structures.

According to the companies, no single entity in the world is capable of matching this novel approach. That statement sounds a bit too strong to me, but it does add competition to a field that includes Albany Molecular Research (AMRI), Cypex, Xenotech, SPI-BIO (France) and Codexis (via BioCatalytics).

At World Biofuels Markets, Novozymes global marketing manager Cindy Bryant credited the company’s Cellic enzyme product family for “achieving the best cost/performance ratio seen so far” and helping to enable cellulosic ethanol pioneers to make cellulosic ethanol a reality. Bryant said that the company expects enzyme costs for cellulosic ethanol to come down to the $0.50-$1.50 per gallon range by 2010, down from $2.00-$4.75 per gallon in 2007.

Note the wording: she is talking about cellulase enzyme cost only, not the overall cost of producing ethanol.

DSM and French starch producer Roquette announced they will jointly commercialize an innovative fermentation process to produce succinic acid. The process will be piloted at the Roquette site in Lestrem, France by the end of this year (2009), with full commercialization seen by 2011-2012. If successful, this will be a major step for White Biotechnology,replacing a petrochemical-based process with a greener, fermentation process. Read the new story here.

A patent application EP2002009 A2 from Rice University (Houston, TX USA)  has recently been published disclosing an anaerobic fermentation of glycerol using an engineered E. coli. The value added products include ethanol (?), formate, succinate, and 1,2-propanediol. SInce there is a glut of glycerol now due to its production as a byproduct of biodiesel, expect a lot of ideas on things that can be produced from glycerol.