Collaboration in BEC-based microbial strain development.

BRAIN Biotech AG, a Ger­man indus­tri­al biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, has select­ed Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty in the Nether­lands as a part­ner for the devel­op­ment of a high­ly effi­cient micro­bial pro­duc­tion strain. Micro­bial pro­duc­tion strains play an impor­tant role in indus­tri­al biotech­nol­o­gy for the mass pro­duc­tion of pro­teins and enzymes. Micro­bial pro­duc­tion enables envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly pro­duc­tion of enzymes for indus­tri­al processes.

The joint devel­op­ment project will use the pro­pri­etary genome edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy “BRAIN Engi­neered Cas” (BEC) to opti­mize dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion strains. Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty will focus on the appli­ca­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy to fur­ther improve the Aspergillus-based pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy in par­tic­u­lar. Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized for its exper­tise in biotech­nol­o­gy, specif­i­cal­ly in Aspergillus-based bio­log­i­cal pro­duc­tion processes.

“We are pleased to have gained a high­ly expe­ri­enced part­ner in Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty with whom we will devel­op an Aspergillus-based pro­duc­tion strain that will excel in high yield. The devel­op­ment of high yield pro­duc­tion strains is a strate­gic goal of the com­pa­ny and offers excel­lent com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties to increase our own pro­duc­tion effi­cien­cy in the BioIn­dus­tri­al seg­ment as well as to license the tech­nol­o­gy to third par­ties. By using our own BEC sys­tem for genome edit­ing, we enjoy free­dom of action and can demon­strate its genome edit­ing prop­er­ties for com­mer­cial use.” 

- Adri­aan Moelk­er, CEO 

Arthur Ram, Prinici­ple Inves­ti­ga­tor at the Insti­tute Biol­o­gy Lei­den (IBL) at Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty says, “It is a great plea­sure and oppor­tu­ni­ty to inves­ti­gate and fur­ther devel­op the new BEC genome edit­ing tool on Aspergillus in this col­lab­o­ra­tion. The project fits well with our mis­sion to devel­op mol­e­c­u­lar genet­ic tools for fun­gal-based biotech­nol­o­gy and con­tribute to the bio-based cir­cu­lar econ­o­my. The devel­op­ment and opti­miza­tion of these mol­e­c­u­lar tools will not only enable effi­cient improve­ment press release of indus­tri­al strains, but will also accel­er­ate our research to under­stand fun­da­men­tal process­es in fun­gi relat­ed to the enor­mous secre­tion capac­i­ty of fil­a­men­tous fungi.”

On May 6, 2021, the Group had announced the devel­op­ment of BRAIN-Engi­neered-Cas (BEC) pro­tein as a nov­el genome edit­ing nucle­ase with val­i­dat­ed genome edit­ing activ­i­ty in var­i­ous microor­gan­isms. The tech­nol­o­gy is already being used in cus­tomer projects and for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of incu­ba­tor projects.