Evolugate Improves DNA-plasmid Production, Ready to Impact Covid-19 Vaccines Manufacturing Throughput

GAINESVILLE, Fla., March 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Evolugate, LLC, a Gainesville-based biotech company, has demonstrated that its proprietary technology can be used to improve the throughput of plasmid DNA manufacturing. Plasmids are essential for nucleic acid-based vaccines and gene therapies. Efficient plasmid production represents a significant bottleneck in the large scale manufacture of several Covid-19 vaccines.

Plasmids are mass produced in bacteria and Evolugate has demonstrated the ability to increase plasmid production from 2-7 fold in two different strains of bacteria. One is a proprietary strain currently under development in-house and the other is a common, commercially used strain.

Evolugate is actively seeking to partner with pharmaceutical companies and contract plasmid manufacturers, to accelerate the production of nucleic acid-based biopharmaceuticals—including Covid-19 vaccines and gene therapy based drugs. According to Evolugate CSO, Thomas Lyons, PhD, "To get ahead of this virus, we need to address every bottleneck in vaccine production, and for nucleic acid-based vaccines that starts with the plasmid producing strain. The benefit of our technology is that vaccine production capacity can be increased many fold without needing to install extra hardware by simply making the strain produce plasmid faster or cheaper. Every added vaccine dose represents a life saved."

About Evolugate

Evolugate, LLC, a privately owned biotechnology company, is the leading evolution biotechnology company that focuses on the development and improvement of microorganisms for diverse industrial purposes.  Evolugate's technology offers the ability to improve existing bio-processes as well as to create new ones through the utilization of a reliable and proprietary continuous culture technology.

Using rapid evolution and natural selection, Evolugate has successfully improved a variety of traits in microorganisms, ranging from slow growth in bacteria (de Crecy et al., 2007) to enhanced insecticidal activity in fungi (de Crecy et al., 2009) to thermotolerance in E. coli (Blaby et al., 2012).

References

1. "Development of a novel continuous culture device for experimental evolution of bacterial populations" E. de Crecy, D. Metzgar, C. Allen, M. Penicaud, B. Lyons, C.J. Hansen and V. de Crecy-Lagard. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (2007) 77:489-496. doi: 10.1007/s00253-007-1168-5.
2. "Directed evolution of a filamentous fungus for thermotolerance" E. de Crecy, S. Jaronski, B. Lyons, T.J. Lyons and N.O. Keyhani. BMC Biotechnology (2009) 9:74. doi: 10.1186/1472-6750-9-74.
3. "Experimental evolution of a facultative thermophile from a mesophilic ancestor" I.K. Blaby, B.J. Lyons, E. Wroclawska-Hughes, G.C.F. Phillips, T.P. Pyle, S.G. Chamberlin, S.A. Benner, T.J. Lyons, V. de Crécy-Lagard, E. de Crécy. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, (2012) 78(1):144-55. doi: 10.1128/AEM.05773-11.

Media Contact:

Alex Himes
352-562-7524
[email protected] 
https://evolugate.com/ 

SOURCE Evolugate, LLC