Lonza has partnered with Synpromics, an Edinburgh, UK-based synthetic promoter and gene-control company, to further develop Synpromics’ inducible promoter system and improve manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals. The 18-month project has been made possible through the award of a £235,000 ($327,500) grant, part of the medicines manufacturing competition from Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency.

Synpromics says one of the challenges in the biotech industry is the production of certain biological drugs that can be toxic to host producer cell lines, thereby inhibiting bioproduction. To overcome this, Synpromics has employed its proprietary technology to develop new synthetic inducible/repressible cell-systems that are driven by non-toxic physiological or chemical stimulus. The new systems demonstrate control of gene expression, according to the company, and can be driven from one plasmid, can incorporate multiple expression cassettes, and offer fine-tuning of gene expression.

Source: Synpromics