Over a three year period, Ajinomoto will fund research and development activities at Evolva, focused initially on building a pathway with Evolva’s fermentation technology, before then focusing on improving production yield through the scale-up and manufacturing phases.
Seven full-time scientists at Evolva are expected to work on the program, to which the Swiss company is in addition, also set to receive milestone payments upon achieving certain goals in terms of yield, productivity and production costs.
The total fees and milestone payments to Evolva during the collaboration will amount to more than CHF 10 million and in case of commercialisation, Evolva will receive a royalty as a percentage on product sold.
On the collaboration Neil Goldsmith, Evolva CEO says: “We look forward to providing Ajinomoto Co with efficient production routes for their important product. For Evolva, this project has long-term benefits as it allows us to build a pathway which can be important for other products.”