News | January 9, 2001

Diversa licenses chemical processing enzymes to Dow

Source: Diversa Corp.
Diversa Corp. (San Diego) has licensed several chemical-processing enzymes to Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, MI) for early-stage testing. Dow will look into the feasibility of using these enzymes to produce chemical products. The licensed enzymes were discovered and developed under a Diversa-Dow collaboration begun in July 1999.

Diversa spokeswoman Hillary Theakston was not at liberty to discuss specifics of the Dow agreement. However, she told Pharmaceutical Online that "it's safe to assume that all our proprietary development technologies were used to produce these enzymes."

"We use gene evolution tools that allow us to substitute any of the 21 naturally-occurring amino acids at each residue in the protein," Theakston said. "We also use gene reassembly to create hybrid genes."

Theakston said her company also was looking into enzyme systems that work together to create small molecule drugs, a technology of great importance to pharmaceutical manufacturers.

For the Diversa-Dow deal, the former has received license fees and will get royalties if and when products are commercialized using Diversa's enzymes during manufacture.

In November 2000, Dow and Diversa announced that they would jointly market their chiral development and production capabilities (see related article).

In addition to Dow, Diversa's strategic partners include Aventis Animal Nutrition, Celanese, Celera Genomics, Danisco Cultor, Glaxo Wellcome plc, Invitrogen, Syngenta (formerly Novartis) Agribusiness Biotechnology Research Inc., and Syngenta (formerly Novartis) Seeds.

For more information, contact Hillary Theakston, director of investor relations for Diversa, at 858-526-5121 or htheakston@diversa.com.

By Angelo DePalma
Managing Editor, Drug Discovery Online and Pharmaceutical Online
Email: adepalma@vertical.net