Lonza Launches Scarab Genomics’ High-Yielding Clean Genome® E. coli for Biologics Production

Scarab Genomics and Lonza announced today the companies have entered into a preferred marketing and sales agreement for Scarab Genomics’ Clean Genome® E. coli. Financial details of the contract were not disclosed.

Under the terms of the agreement, Lonza will support Scarab Genomics’ business development activities and becomes the preferred marketing provider for the Clean Genome® technology, giving Lonza customers full access to the platform for protein and plasmid DNA production. Additionally, Lonza and Scarab Genomics will work together to develop new cutting-edge microbial expression technologies.

“As the industry leading CMO, Lonza has a wealth of experience in developing and marketing novel expression solutions,” said Fred Blattner, CEO of Scarab Genomics. “We’re extremely happy to be working with Lonza to bring the Clean Genome® technology to a wider customer base.”

The optimized Clean Genome® E. coli strain is designed to provide enhanced genetic stability, improved metabolic efficiency and improved production yields. These properties make Clean Genome® E. coli a powerful system to establish commercially superior manufacturing processes for therapeutic proteins, plasmid DNA, and vaccines.

“The Scarab Genomics technology is a stable, high yielding platform that enables customers to lower their cost of goods and simplify their production process,” said Joachim Klein, Head of Microbial Innovation & Strain Development for Lonza. “Lonza is very pleased to be able to offer this breakthrough microbial expression technology to our customers side by side with our existing XS Microbial Expression Technologies™.”

During the original sequencing of the E.coli genome, Dr. Blattner’s group discovered inherent deficiencies in standard E. coli as a production strain. He went on to found Scarab Genomics, and the company has bioengineered the Clean Genome® E. coli by deleting about 650 genes (~15% of the E. coli K-12 genome) to create an optimized production host. Using synthetic biology methods, Scarab Genomics eliminated nonessential genes, insertion sequence (IS) elements, recombinogenic/mobile DNA, cryptic viruses, and virulence genes from the genome.