Overview

Genencor International Inc. uses its integrated genomics platform, called the i-biotech solution, to develop novel products for the health care, agricultural and industrial chemical industries. The technologies include gene discovery and functional genomics, molecular evolution and design, metabolic pathway engineering, human immunology and biomaterial production and formulation delivery systems.

The company sources new materials from environments as diverse as Antarctica and the high mountains of Kenya, and it produces materials in more than 15 biological production systems in manufacturing plants located worldwide.

The company said it continues to create ways to accelerate the natural evolutionary process, with advances in the field of directed evolution and its Mutator Technology tools for biomaterial products. Genencor has also developed the i-mune system for human immunology research.

In March 2001, Genencor initiated and initially funded the EcoReg Consortium to construct and maintain a database to warehouse all relevant information on the genetic regulation of Escherichia coli. Members of the consortium include Genencor and other experts in gene regulation and bioinformatics: Peter Karp of SRI International; Milton Saier of the University of California, San Diego; Tyrrell Conway of the University of Oklahoma; and Adam Arkin of the University of California, Berkeley.

The database will complement SRI’s existing EcoCyc pathway/genome database, a collection of information about E. coli biochemistry and its genome. It will be available free of charge to the scientific academic community via the web at http://gobi.lbl.gov/~ecoreg/.

Partners

Genencor partners include Energy Biosystems Corp., Epimmune Inc., Gyros AB, Integrated Genomics Inc., Phogen Ltd., Seattle Genetics Inc., Danisco A/S, Dow Corning Corp., DuPont, Eastman Chemical Co., Procter & Gamble Co., Protein Polymer Technologies Inc., XGene Corp., the UK Department of Health’s Centre for Applied Microbiology & Research and Johns Hopkins University.