Biocatalysis specialist Codexis used Informex US 2010 to announce separate collaborations in pharmaceutical manufacturing with Dishman Pharmaceuticals & Chemicals of India and US firm Ampac Fine Chemicals (AFC). The latter has also recently concluded an agency agreement in Japan with Inabata & Co.

Under these deals, Codexis’s proprietary biocatalyst technology will be used in unspecified therapeutic products in the two firms’ portfolios, with a view to cutting costs and increasing manufacturing efficiency. Environmental benefits are also claimed. Codexis, which was spun out from Maxygen in 2002, is currently seeking an IPO after having to abandon one in the weak financial markets of 2009.

The agreement with Dishman will involve working exclusively to supply intermediates and APIs made using Codexis technology to “a select group of innovators”. Dishman, which operates 12 facilities in India, China, Switzerland and the UK, will also be Codexis’s preferred CMO partner with other innovators.

“This gives us a technology differentiator, of which we don’t have many at present, with all the advantages biocatalysis brings. Codexis get the benefit of selling their technology to our customers,” Rhona Cameron, commercial manager of Dishman subsidiary Carbogen Amcis, told SCM at Informex USA 2010.

This is not an exclusive licence, Cameron stressed, but it does make Dishman a preferred partner. Although the deal had just been signed, she added, it is already generating a lot of interest and a number of projects are under evaluation.

In January, Carbogen Amcis opened its new high potency facility at the Dishman headquarters in Ahmedabad, the first of its kind in India. The next milestone will be the opening of a GMP API facility at the Shanghai Business Park in mid-year, giving the company a second source of supply for large-volume projects in the Asian market.

Despite some reports to the effect, Cameron said, Carbogen Amcis has not closed any of its facilities. Due to the difficult market in early phase development, there has been some reorganisation at the main Bubendorf site in Switzerland and whenever jobs are cut there, it has to be notified to the government and becomes a matter of public record. However, there have been and will be no actual closures.

Fewer details were given about Codexis’s deal with AFC, which is based in Rancho Cordova, California, and custom manufactures of pharmaceutical fine chemicals, including high potency APIs, but it is understood to refer to high energy chemistry applications. This is one of AFC’s key specialities, alongside industrial-scale simulated moving bed chromatography.

The other deal, making Inabata AFC’s exclusive agent in Japan, is designed to give the company access to the Japanese market for its API manufacturing technologies. Company president said that Inabata has “a strong track record of successfully pairing technologies with client needs and knows the Japanese marketplace well”, enabling it to find partners who could benefit from using AFC technologies.