Novo Holdings has made a €86 million investment in 21st.Bio, a Danish bioindustrial scale-up company.
21st.Bio supports bioindustrial companies with matters such as the upscaling of molecular innovation or large-scale production that can meet market demands and advance the green transition globally.
One core focal area for 21st.Bio is producing proteins and peptides that can be utilised for the food, materials and agricultural industries.
21st.Bio’s technology platform originates from selected parts of Novozymes, which provides a co-exclusive license to 21st.Bio within certain boundaries of applications.
Access to selected parts of Novozymes’ R&D platform and the investment by Novo Holdings will enable the company to expand its capabilities even further.
Thomas Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of 21st.Bio, said: “Many brilliant industrial biotech ideas never succeed, because production challenges result in too high price points for the final product. Hence, a vast number of otherwise great innovations do not make it to a scale at which they are truly relevant for the world”.
He continued: “At 21st.Bio, we can help establish the right technology for producing novel molecules and peptides and hence help innovators successfully make the difficult step from innovation to big business and impact for the planet. We have gained access to a selection of Novozymes’ unique technology platform on commercial terms, which means that a success for 21st.Bio is also a success for Novozymes.”
Søren Møller, managing partner of Novo Seeds at Novo Holdings, will join the company’s board of directors.
By Lauren Ford
Source: foodbev.com
The company plans to pour more than $500 million in additional funds into its active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) plant in Raheen, Limerick County, the country’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) said. The new funding brings the company’s total investment in the site to 927 million euros ($1 billion).
“If in 2005 someone told you that two-thirds of our industry would be driven on the R&D side by emerging biopharma—it would be unthinkable. If one were to project that trend forward, what it would suggest is that we could have a day when we do this talk, say in 2027 or 2028, where 80% of the industry’s pipeline is coming from emerging companies.”
The German healthcare and agrochemicals giant told Reuters that in future its pharma pipeline will focus on cardiovascular disease, neurology, rare diseases and immunology, while de-emphasizing women’s health, a field it first focused on with the acquisition of the former women’s health specialist Schering in 2006.
