Amyris Biotechnologies focuses on translating the promise of synthetic biology into solutions for real-world problems. Applying advances in molecular biology and rapid enzymatic pathway construction techniques, Amyris engineers microbes capable of cost-effectively producing high-value, complex molecules that currently are available only in small quantities through extraction from natural resources. Amyris is employing these microbial chemical factories to produce a wide range of pharmaceutical and fine chemical products.

Amyris’ technology combines a cutting-edge synthetic biology platform with sophisticated chemical engineering methodologies to build microbes that biosynthesize complex molecules in scalable fermentations. If necessary, this biosynthesis can then be coupled with traditional synthetic chemistry in the development of novel, innovative production processes. This bio-synthetic and/or semi-synthetic approach to product development has numerous advantages over extraction and total chemical synthesis:

• stable, scalable, unlimited supply

• high yields and low production costs

• excellent product consistency with low batch variability

• access to complex molecules that are impossible to synthesize or extract from nature

By coupling engineered, isoprenoid-producing microbial strains with traditional chemistry, Amyris will produce stable, consistent, and cost-effective supplies of natural products. This includes both products that are currently marketed and products that were dropped or excluded from development due to supply limitations.

By extending the one-gene, one-product paradigm of the last two decades to the remodeling of an organism’s metabolism, Amyris is expanding the reach and impact of biotechnology. Fully integrated biological/chemical production processes will bring the chemical diversity and complexity of nature into the laboratory and unlock the full potential of natural products. Nature has developed many of the most bioactive compounds known. Sixty percent of drugs approved between 1981 to 2002 were traceable to complex chemicals isolated from nature. Amyris’ technology allows access to those compounds as well as novel derivatives of those compounds. Due to their inherent supply limitations, these compounds have been woefully underdeveloped considering the excellent quality of the preclinical and clinical efficacy data they have generated. Amyris is currently bridging the gap between thousands of underdeveloped promising natural compounds and the pipeline of life-saving therapeutics delivered to patients.

Using its unique technology platform, Amyris' goal is to be the leader in bringing natural product therapeutics to the marketplace. The Amyris team of scientists and engineers is now poised to commercialize pharmaceuticals and other high value, fine chemicals taken from the world’s forests and oceans by making these compounds in synthetic microbes. With this powerful technology, Amyris aims to both improve global health and build a sustainable, responsible business.

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