Novozymes looking for opportunities in Australia

Danish company Novozyme is aiming to become the "Intel" of biopharmaceuticals, and is looking for opportunities for partnerships, acquisitions and technology licensing in Australia.

Director Otto Skolling said the company is looking to leverage its experience in industrial biotechnology, in particular the production of enzymes, to expand into biopolymers and biopharmaceuticals, as well as into industrial microorganisms.

"Because we are a business to business company, we are not looking for particular classes of drugs, such as oncology, rather we're looking for proteins, peptides and so on that fit into our business model," Skolling said.

"We want to use our core competencies around proteins and enzymes in new fields."

Novozymes' approach is not just as a contract manufacturer of biopharmaceutical raw materials, Skolling said, but as a business partner which can put its knowledge and experience to work. The company has enormous knowledge of genetic and biochemical diversity, particularly in fungal and bacterial species, protein optimisation, protein chemistry, pathway engineering, strain development and improvement, and large scale production including fermentation, with over 4000 patents, more than 600 products and nearly 800 scientists working in R&D.

"What we don't have is the application knowledge," he said.

Skolling said ultimately Novozymes would like to become the "Intel" of biopharmaceuticals, producing the biochemical raw materials of biological drugs.

In the biopolymer area, the company has obtained the rights for large scale production of hyaluronic acid (HA) from US-based Hyalose, and last December signed a major agreement with Melbourne biotech company Meditech to co-develop Meditech's novel HyACT formulation for chemotherapeutic drugs.

Under the terms of the deal, each company is able to access and commercially exploit certain parts of the other company's intellectual property as well as jointly produced intellectual property. The two companies also derive financial benefits arising from each other's commercialisation of the licensed technology.

Skolling said large scale production of HA, initially for the cosmetic market, is expected this year and other polysaccharide-based biopolymers are expected to be added to the company's capabilities soon.

In the biopharmaceutical arena, the company acquired BioGaia Fermentation in 2002 giving it access to cGMP production facilities, and more recently has entered into an agreement with Neugenesis to access technology for the fungal expression of monoclonal antibodies, which may offer a smoother path to market than mammalian cell-produced antibodies.

The company is targeting antibodies, antimicrobial peptides and allergy vaccines based on recombinant allergens as its initial areas of interest in biopharmaceuticals.

Novozymes is a subsidiary of Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, with a turnover in 2003 of DKK 5803 million, an operating profit of DKK 982 million and a market share for industrial enzymes of 44 per cent.