Sep 25, 2019   SOURCE: BusinessWire

CB Therapeutics Advances Its Intellectual Property Portfolio for Its Cellular Agriculture Platform with New Patent Applications

CB Therapeutics is a leading synthetic biotechnology company focused on the research and development of cellular agriculture for the production of high-value molecules, compounds and rare ingredients.

CB Therapeutics has developed a patent-pending platform for creating and annotating libraries of biosynthetic pathway genes from next generation sequencing data. Processing and analyzing large amounts of raw biological data from diverse organisms is a significant bottleneck for gene discovery and biosynthetic pathway elucidation. Accelerating this process and increasing the breadth of organisms studied can drastically improve success in producing high-value natural products in microorganisms.

“We have greatly bolstered our gene discovery and enzyme engineering efforts for our growing project portfolio by combining our platform with sequencing data from various fungal, plant, and bacteria species. Proof of our success with this platform includes the discovery of novel cannabinoid producing enzymes in non-Cannabacae plant species and discovering enzymes which boost the titers of certain natural products in yeast,” says Tyrone Yacoub, PhD, Senior Bioinformatician at CB Therapeutics.

CB Therapeutics has also developed a patent-pending method for greatly increasing the titers of cannabinoids and related compounds. The invention, pioneered by synthetic biology veteran and senior scientist at CB Therapeutics Erin Scott, PhD, involves genetically modifying a microorganism to express a specific class of heterologous enzymes, allowing a microorganism to more efficiently uptake and metabolize these feedstocks, to produce more cannabinoid molecules from the resulting feedstock building blocks.

“The discovery of a new class of enzymes which boosts the precursors which feed into the cannabinoid biosynthetic pathway in a heterologous host such as baker’s yeast, has helped maintain our early lead in research and development in this field,” stated Jacob Vogan, CSO of CB Therapeutics.

CB Therapeutics has also developed a patent-pending method for continuously isolating and purifying cannabinoid molecules from an ongoing fermentation. The inventor, Jim Wade, PhD, Director of Analytical Chemistry at CB Therapeutics, is a leading expert and accomplished scientist in a multitude of biosynthetic endeavors. His experience in the field has enabled CB Therapeutics to lead the cellular agriculture field in downstream isolation of natural products.

“Continuous product removal is a fundamental way to improve the productivity during a fermentation run, preventing product buildup and increasing overall product titers to significantly improve yields in the production process,” says Jacob Vogan, CSO of CB Therapeutics.

About CB Therapeutics

CB Therapeutics is currently producing high value molecules, compounds and rare ingredients from simple sugars utilizing yeast and the process of fermentation. CB Therapeutics’ expertise in synthetic genomics and bio-engineering has significantly advanced its proprietary production platform of yeasts, enzymes and production processes. After four years of research and development, the CB Therapeutics team is able to produce a broad range of phytochemicals faster, utilizing fewer resources, at greater yields and with more purity, consistency and efficiency than Mother Nature. A 7000+ sf fully-licensed commercial batch facility in San Diego County, California includes research labs, offices and a production facility for laboratory scale and pilot production runs and is equipped with a suite of bench-top and large-scale fermenters for multiple biosynthetic production applications.