Biotechnology has enabled the rapid production of tailored bioactive peptides for use in the pharmaceutical industry including recombinant insulin in the 1980s – the first successful product of the modern biotech industry. More recently, peptides are also being developed and commercialised for their functional properties.
The team at Isomerase can express and isolate ribosomal (and non-ribosomal) peptides, oligopeptides and polypeptides (linear and cyclic) or short protein fragments.
Example projects have included the following:
- Engineering expression constructs - we have access to, and have used, a variety of protein tags including solubility or insolubility enhancing tags, affinity purification tags and enzymatic and non-enzymatic cleavage tags. These can be used to generate expression constructs which can be easily and cost-effectively expressed, purified and with targeted amino acid sequence
- Cell-free or cell-based methods - we have experience with both cell-free protein synthesis and cell-based methods using a variety of tried and tested expression strains
- Fermentation optimisation - we use our rapid proprietary methods or develop and optimise bespoke methods depending on the partner’s needs
- DSP optimisation - we have significant experience of generating cost-effective methods for rapidly purifying peptides from cell mixtures. This includes cell lysis (e.g. chemical lysis, sonication, homogenisation), purification (e.g. tangential flow filtration, affinity purification, column purification, inclusion body isolation, stabilising agents). We have a range of methods that can be applied to either rapidly access semi-purified enzymes for initial trials or to develop scalable commercially attractive processes for enzyme manufacturing
- Technology transfer - we are skilled at generating technology transfer packages and supporting the transfer of these methods to outsourced fermentation facilities for scale up. This can either be hands-off (e.g. facility of client’s choosing, supply of documentation only) or hands-on (support with selection and assessment of facilities using our extensive network, ’person in plant’ for initial runs to support tech transfer) depending on the client’s requirements
We would love to discuss your project and explore how we can support you – please contact us