Cytovance Biologics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), and Phenotypeca Ltd., a research and development organization with proprietary yeast expression technology for recombinant protein manufacture, have entered into an agreement to provide optimized Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains for biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

The alliance aims to accelerate the development of high-performance yeast strains and to improve the efficiency of biologics production for biopharma clients by leveraging Cytovance Biologics’s extensive knowledge in microbial fermentation and Phenotypeca’s yeast strain development technology to produce high quality expressing cell lines.

The partnership extends Cytovance Biologics’ leadership in manufacturing microbial-derived active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) from end to end and expands Phenotypeca’s commercial reach.

“This collaboration is an exciting opportunity to leverage Phenotypeca’s expertise in yeast strain development to enhance our microbial capabilities. We look forward to working with Phenotypeca to develop high-performance Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains and advance the biologic through product lifecycle,” said Ping Zhang, CEO of Cytovance Biologics.

Johnny Cordiner, CEO of Phenotypeca said: “Our technology platform has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency and yield of biologics production, and we are excited to collaborate with Cytovance Biologics to bring our technology to new partners.”

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is widely used in the biopharmaceutical industry for the safe production of therapeutic proteins and other biologics, the strain breeding and genomic proprietary technology of Phenotypeca brings a new era of additional capabilities to this established technology.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is well suited to make certain types of human proteins and can be harnessed as tiny, efficient factories for producing biopharmaceuticals. More than 20 biopharmaceutical products have already been approved by the FDA using Saccharomyces cerevisiae as the manufacturing organism.