Amyris, Inc., the industrial bioscience company, and Infectious Disease Research Institute  (IDRI), a Seattle-based non-profit research organisation that uses biotechnology to create new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines, have inked an agreement to explore testing and development of an Amyris material for use in adjuvant formulations, which enhance the effectiveness of vaccines.

Amyris will provide its materials for testing new adjuvant formulations, and the organisations will work together to explore their use to improve the global supply of important vaccines.

Amyris’s has demonstrated success in creating new ingredients for multiple markets that disrupts the status quo, reduces development cost and speeds product development while providing stable, low-cost supply alternatives. This success has resulted in leading global companies selecting Amyris as a collaboration partner to solve their difficult product development and supply issues. Today, this disruptive technology is well suited toward enhancing development, and increasing supply, of life-saving drugs and vaccines, all while reducing development costs.

The partnership with IDRI is led by a common goal to increase both efficacy and global availability of vaccines to assist people in need throughout the world. To that end, as a non-profit biotech drug and vaccine development institute, IDRI uses its proprietary technologies to develop critically needed products to address a wide range of infectious diseases. The combination of Amyris and IDRI technologies could be a powerful and scalable approach to the development and large scale production of novel, cost-effective global health products.

"With our early history in using innovative microbial engineering and screening technologies to convert plant-sugars into an alternative, lower-cost, stable supply of artemisinin, an effective anti-malarial, we developed advanced methods for solving difficult drug-development problems to save lives," said Joel Cherry, president of research & development at Amryis.

"This experience coupled with advances we’ve made since then, enables us to harness the power of our HI-RYSE (Hyper-Integration for Rapid Yeast Strain Engineering) technology to speed molecule development from concept to commercial scale. As a result, we believe we are well positioned to work with important organisations like IDRI to create innovative ingredients for pharmaceutical applications. Simply put, we can help our partners save on drug development costs and improve worldwide drug availability."

"We're pleased to join with Amyris in furthering our efforts in developing new adjuvant formulations for vaccines, and ensuring their accessibility globally," said Darrick Carter, Ph.D. and vice president, Adjuvant Technology at IDRI.

"Advancements in our adjuvant portfolio have been enabled by the generous support of governmental agencies and philanthropic organisations, and we are excited to collaborate with a leading company like Amyris in seeking to further expand on advancements in this critical area."