BRAIN acquires biotech assets of MerLion Pharmaceuticals

The assets include selected microbial strains, a substantial gene collection (Tool-Box) encoding modifying enzymes and a huge collection of cosmid libraries comprising more than 800,000 cosmids, harboring some 16 million genes encoding for novel enzymes and biocatalysts, which in the last years have been built up and genetically characterized by the Berlin-based Combinature Biopharm.

Under the terms of the agreement, Brain will acquire selected Actinomycete strains from Merlion. These microorganisms are well known as producers of natural bioactive compounds as well as rare enzymes and biocatalysts.

Under this transaction Brain will receive a substantial number of precharacterised and profiled E coli cosmid genome libraries from diverse Actinomycete strains, a Tool-Box comprising several hundreds of cloned genes encoding modifying enzymes as well as a huge Actinomycete DNA collection which can be used for sequence-based screening approaches.

Brain will use these assets for the targeted genetic screening of genes encoding industrial enzymes and metabolic pathways. The pathway genes will be used for the genetic engineering of microbial producer strains with the goal of high yield expression of compounds for interesting white biotech markets.

Harald Labischinski, managing director of MerLion, said: “We see this development as an exciting opportunity to bring our gene library assets into a research and business environment which will deliver substantial growth.”