Amyris and Janssen Collaborate on Biosynthetic Drug Discovery

On June 6, 2016 Amyris, an industrial bioscience company, entered into a research agreement with a commercial license option, with Janssen Biotech, a subsidiary of Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies. Under the terms of the agreement, facilitated by Johnson & Johnson Innovation, the collaboration will use Amyris’s µPharm platform technology to develop a customized library of natural and natural-like compounds to test against Janssen’s therapeutic target, Amyris said in a press announcement. The µPharm platform technology enables an integrated discovery and production process for therapeutic compounds. The platform creates diversity based on natural compound scaffolds.

"We are helping to take some of the guess work out of new drug discovery, which helps our partners, like Janssen, to be able to more quickly understand target interaction and ultimately discover new therapies faster," said Joel Cherry, Amyris's president, R&D.

According to the press announcement, Amyris will use the µPharm platform technology to develop a library of compounds and test their efficacy in-vivo for hits against Janssen’s identified target. The µPharm platform starts with the target, identifies candidate natural compound structures, and then creates diversity around those structures for in-vivo testing.