Nexxus Scotland

Ingenza

Researchers at the small Scottish biotechnology company Ingenza are modern-day alchemists. No mythic quest to turn lead to gold here though, the Ingenza scientists use advanced biological techniques to turn low-cost chemicals into high value products: fine chemicals for drug manufacturing, proteins for biopharmaceuticals, and alcohols for biofuels.

Ingenza, founded in 2002 and based at the Roslin BioCentre near Edinburgh, built its reputation for high quality, high yield processes on its fine chemical work for the manufacturing industry. Researchers at Ingenza developed novel systems that harness both biological reactions (using enzymes) and chemical reactions to make specific chemicals, such as amino acids and amines, for the production of pharmaceuticals. 

"It's all about making microbes more efficient at producing what we want them to produce," said Operations Director Robert Speight.

The company has 19 staff members and is part of the 50-plus employee Richmond Chemical Corporation, based in Chicago, USA. Researchers at Ingenza work on projects internally and for external clients who need help getting from a starting material to a final product as efficiently as possible.

Ingenza invests a hefty portion of its research and resources in building the company's portfolio of technologies. The first platform technology developed is a proprietary biocatalysis process that strings together a series of biological and chemical reactions to make pure compounds at large scale.  The company also has expertise in protein synthesis and fermentation; techniques for evolving and engineering enzymes towards specific needs; and screening systems to rapidly identify which microbes will work best in manufacturing processes. This often involves finding the right enzymes, or tweaking existing ones, to perform conversions of one chemical to another.

"The type of molecules we're making are important in pharmaceutical manufacture, but they're challenging to make using traditional chemistry. We take advantage of biological systems to do things that chemistry finds difficult," said Dr Speight.

In its early days, Ingenza won funding from the Scottish Executive, Scottish Enterprise and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Now part of the larger Richmond Chemical Corporation, Ingenza works on a variety of specific client requests, as well as exploring new sectors. 

"Biotechnology, fermentation, enzyme evolution, and process development - these are the areas of expertise, the enabling technologies that we built up in the biocatalysis area that then allowed us to get into biopharmaceuticals and biofuels," said Dr Speight.

Ingenza has timed it right: its expertise fits the needs of biopharmaceutical and biofuel manufacturers trying to gain an advantage in these highly competitive fields.

The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to produce more drugs based on proteins and other biological molecules rather than the historic model of chemical compounds. This presents new challenges for drug manufacturers.

Biological drugs are often produced by microbes - bacteria or yeast - through fermentation. For pharmaceutical manufacture, these biological processes must be safe, efficient, consistent and predictable.  Ingenza works with companies to improve these specialised biological manufacturing systems.

Biofuels are also becoming big business. Microbes ferment biomass such as corn or sugarcane into ethanol or other alcohols for use in fuels.  The world often looks to Brazil, where ethanol derived from sugar cane powers nearly all cars on the road, as the best example of biofuels at work on a large scale. Ingenza has tapped in to this expertise, travelling to Brazil and hosting a return visit of Brazilian scientists to Ingenza. These interactions will help Ingenza's scientists scale-up their work engineering microbes for the biofuel industry. 

"There's pressure on land use, so the more fuel you can extract from a crop the better it is economically and environmentally," said Dr Speight.  "Improving efficiency is important at every step; we're focusing on the fermentation part, getting microbes to make more fuel from the same amount of raw material input."

Ingenza intends to bring more biocatalysis-based processes to large-scale manufacturing in the future and help to improve drug manufacture processes. Pushing out its technologies into biopharmaceutical and biofuel manufacture will open up new markets and address manufacturing and sustainable energy needs.

"Having a home-base in Scotland is beneficial," explained Dr Speight. "There's focused support for individual companies through the enterprise networks, you do feel you get more access to government here, and can get a higher profile.

"We are all very excited about the future with more technologies and products approaching commercialisation," said Dr Speight. "The next couple of years will be very important as we build on our strong technology base and highly skilled workforce to deliver products that have real impact in a number of markets."

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