Pichia Engineering

The technology team at Isomerase have developed a wide range of cutting-edge tools to provide Pichia services, engineering and eukaryotic protein fermentation to our partners.

We have a range of proprietary Pichia strains, including auxotrophic mutants and protease knockouts, which we can offer to our partners for use in developing commercial production processes without the requirement for royalties or downstream milestones. 

We have developed (and are continuing to create) a range of technologies that enable rapid effective production of products in Pichia, such as methods and strains for methanol-free production, rapid engineering tools, secretion and purification tags, and vector systems for rapid high-level production.

We have developed a series of fermentation and DSP methods for use in flasks and stirred tank reactors (STRs) that enable the rapid development of high-titre Pichia processes for the production of our client’s products.

What is Pichia?

Pichia is a genus of yeasts which includes the industrial production strain Pichia pastoris, also known as Komagataella pastoris. Pichia pastoris is a methylotrophic yeast, meaning that it can use methanol as a sole carbon source. It has a number of properties that make it highly valuable for industrial biotech production including the potential for high cell densities, rapid growth, potential for secretion of products, rapid engineering, lack of endotoxins and eukaryotic post-translational processing. Many Pichia processes have also been granted GRAS status (Generally Regarded as Safe). As a Pichia CRO, Isomerase offers Pichia services to support clients and give them access to a highly valuable route to the production of a variety of products.

Why use Pichia as a host cell?

Pichia pastoris is an excellent host for the production of peptides, proteins and other valuable products. A few examples are as follows:

It is a eukaryotic system and is capable of post-translational modification of peptides and proteins. Examples of modifications include glycosylation, acetylation, phosphorylation and methylation. These modifications can affect the solubility of the activity of the product

Pichia are prodigious secretors into the fermentation broth and are capable of high-level production of secreted proteins and peptides.

Unlike most bacterial host systems, such as E.coli, Pichia does not produce endotoxins, such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which can cause issues in downstream processing, especially with parenterally administered products.

Pichia strains can be grown to high cell density on cheap substrates, such as glycerol and methanol.

What can Pichia be used to produce?

Pichia is a versatile industrial strain that can be used to produce a range of valuable products including:

• Biocatalytic enzymes. One primary use of Pichia is to produce enzymes for use in biocatalysis. They are particularly suited to enzymes from eukaryotic sources, especially those that need post-translational modification for activity (such as glycosylation or phosphorylation) or enzymes that need to be secreted.

• Other recombinant proteins. These can be used for rapid production of epitopes for vaccines, as drugs such as antibody fragments and personal care products, such as large peptides.

• Small molecules. Pichia can be engineered to produce natural products small molecules such as drug intermediates or APIs, vitamins, pigments and dyes, and antioxidants. These can be valuable in the cosmetics, food and pharmaceutical industries.

Why choose Isomerase for Pichia services?

The team at isomerase are highly skilled at working with microorganisms such as Pichia. We have developed our own cutting-edge proprietary Pichia technologies which we can offer to partners and our own proprietary Pichia strains that can allow partners to avoid expensive downstream royalties or milestones when entering commercial production. We have expertise across biosynthesis, bioinformatics, strain engineering, analytics, fermentation development, downstream development, scaleup and tech transfer – meaning we can support partners all the way from concept to final product and process.

Please contact us today to ask for a quote for Pichia services.