Under the terms of the agreement, OneWorld Health, Amyris and sanofi-aventis will work jointly to develop and design pilot and commercial scale manufacturing processes, with the goal of introducing low-cost, semisynthetic artemisinin into the supply chain and artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) in 2010.
Amyris will provide strain engineering expertise using the novel tools of synthetic biology. Sanofi-Aventis will provide fermentation and chemistry process development expertise, and OneWorld Health will focus on the achievement of public policy and global access goals. If technical benchmarks are achieved, sanofi-Aventis will commercialize the semisynthetic artemisinin.