Development of new marine enzymes for research and diagnostics

ArcticZymes (AZ) develops, produce and sell enzymes for use in molecular research and diagnostics. The market is expansive and diversifying creating a continuous need for new and improved products. The InnoZymes project has enabled AZ to innovate and de velop several new products for use in molecular life sciences from enzymes originating from marine bioprospecting. Molecular applications are prone to impurities and contamination potentially leading to erroneous results. In 2012 AZ launched the first product based on results from the InnoZymes project, the Heat&Run Kit, which allows rapid effortless and complete removal of gDNA in RNA preps prior to reverse transcription. AZ has developed a new engineered heat-labile salt active nuclease to address D NA contamination issues in protein purification and reagents for molecular applications. AZ has also started to release products in a portfolio for enzymatic purification of PCR products prior to sequencing or genotyping based on new marine exonucleases a nd shrimp alkaline phosphatase. The results from the InnoZymes project has been presented in several poster and oral presentations on international conferences, and two new patent applications have been filed. The project has established a basis for f uture growth in ArcticZymes and the possibility to enter new business segments.

Biotec Marine Biochemicals (MB) develops, produce and sell enzymes used in molecular DNA technology and diagnostics. The market is highly expansive, and the rapid and diversifying technological development creates a market-pull for new and improved enzyme s. To take advantage of this rapid development and growing market, MB has been heavily involved as a commercial partner in several marine bioprospecting activities that form a large source and pipeline for new commercial enzymes from the Arctic marine env ironment. As promising product candidates have started to materialize and are to be brought in-house for further development, MB has a pressing need to increase the internal research and development (R&D) activity in order to bring these candidates the fi nal steps to commercial products. In this user-driven innovation project we will establish an internal commercialization platform to quickly bring promising candidates from marine bioprospecting activities to commercial products. In a collaborating effo rt with University of Tromsø (UiT), we will develop high-throughput assays, both to establish a platform for molecular evolution for further product refinement, and to enable functional screening for selected enzyme activities. The project will enable MB to increase R&D activity and bring new enzymes originating from marine bioprospecting faster to market-ready products for use in nucleic acid based technologies, genetic research and molecular diagnostics, and to do characterization and application testi ng as early as possible to secure intellectual property rights (IPR).