Porton opens fermentation lab

Porton Pharma Solutions, a Chinese custom API services firm, has officially put into use its fermentation pilot laboratory at Chongqing, Sichuan province. This, the company said, marks “another important milestone of the strategic partnership” in biocatalysis with protein engineering specialist Codexis.

The two firms first concluded a strategic cooperation in April 2018, the same year that Porton set up its technical platform, including biocatalysis, technology at Shanghai. Codexis licensed the core elements of its biocatalysis technology to Porton.

This included its biocatalyst library, high-throughput screening and enzyme production technology, plus an “exclusive priority channel” of its CodeEvolver protein engineering platform technology. Since then, the partnership has focused on screening biocatalysts against many of Porton’s CDMO process opportunities.

Last year, Porton installed catalysis technology and fermentation lab there. Its biocatalysis team, numbering 14, has since undertaken 38 biocatalysis projects at industrial scale. The new lab contains 5L, 20L and 300L fermentation tanks, enabling Porton to deliver kilo-scale enzyme powder preparations and meet the pilot scale production demand.