Japanese biotech company Spiber has announced the launch of Spiber Biofoundry, a contract development and manufacturing service for strain development and advanced fermentation.

The company has built its expertise in strain engineering and fermentation over nearly two decades and is now offering its high-yield strain development services to customers targeting proteins.

Founded in Yamagata, Japan in 2007, the company develops structural proteins produced by microbial fermentation from plant-derived sugars. It operates an R&D site in Tsuruoaka, Japan and a commercial production plant in Rayong, Thailand.

The new Spiber Biofoundry provides process development and contract manufacturing at every scale, from 1-litre fermenters to commercial facilities of over 100 kL. Target products include industrial enzymes and food ingredients, as well as research reagants and diagnostic raw materials.

The service is targeting companies facing challenges surrounding low yields and scale-up, with start-ups facing barriers around taking a recombinant protein of their own from laboratory yields to commercial production. Spiber has achieved this with its Brewed Protein innovation, which is used as a material for textile applications.

The company can optimise the gene sequence for the customer’s target protein, then introduce it into its proprietary microbial host strains and evaluate expression in culture. In case studies, Spiber designed five sequences for each target protein and tested them against a control: the same gene optimised and supplied by a commercial gene synthesis provider. According to Spiber, for human FGF-2 protein, all five of its sequences outperformed the control, delivering 5.9 to 9.4 times its yield.

In broader benchmarking, Spiber-optimised sequences reportedly outperformed the benchmark for over 90% of target proteins tested, with improvements averaging four-fold and reaching 40-fold. The benchmark was each protein’s original sequence before optimisation.

For customers who already have a production strain, Spiber develops the fermentation and purification process and manufactures under contract at whatever scale is needed, from 1-litre bench fermenters to 2,000-litre vessels at its R&D site in Tsuruoaka, or commercial fermenters of over 100 kL at its plant in Rayong.

Each stage can be commissioned on its own, from a single lab-scale evaluation to full production runs. The service covers proteins, other fermentation products and microbial biomass.

Maya Kawana, CEO of Spiber, said: “Developing diverse structural proteins has enabled us to build the technology, expertise and facilities needed to scale fermentation from the lab to commercial production”.

“Our work with strategic partners already extends beyond apparel textiles. This service may also create new opportunities for collaboration across industries. By helping more companies bring their technologies to market, we aim to accelerate progress toward a world where we no longer compete for finite resources.”