The 6th CMC China Expo and China Pharmaceutical Agents Conference will grandly open on August 15, 2024 at the Suzhou International Expo Center! This expo invites over 500 entrepreneurs and industry leaders to share their views and successful experiences, covering topics such as “biopharmaceuticals and synthetic biology, pharmaceutical CMC&innovation&CXO, MAH&CXO&DS, pharmaceutical industry chain”. Over 300 professional topics are carefully designed, covering every link from replication to innovation, from project approval, research and development to commercialization.

Dr. Qu Yujiao, the head of Protoga Labs, shared the results of the biosynthesis of L-astaxanthin, a microalgae source, at the SynBio Suzhou China Synthetic Biology “Scientists+Entrepreneurs+Investors” conference at the expo. At the same time, Protoga Labs was selected as an “Outstanding Enterprise in Synbio Suzhou Synthetic Biology”.

Astaxanthin is a deep red ketone carotenoid with strong antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and coloring properties. It has three configurations, among which astaxanthin 3S and 3 ′ S-Astaxanthin have the strongest antioxidant capacity, and have broad application prospects in medicine, health products, cosmetics, food additives, and aquaculture.

The traditional methods of producing astaxanthin include natural biological extraction of astaxanthin, red yeast astaxanthin, and artificial chemical synthesis of astaxanthin.

Astaxanthin extracted from natural organisms (fish, shrimp, algae, etc.) is essentially enriched from water bodies, and this production method has high production costs, is unsustainable, and carries the risk of pollutants;

The astaxanthin produced by red yeast is mainly a right-handed structure with insufficient biological activity and low unit content;

Astaxanthin synthesized by artificial chemistry is mainly composed of racemic structures, with low biological activity, and excessive doping of chemical substances during the synthesis process. Its safety needs to be demonstrated through relevant experiments.

Protoga applies synthetic biology techniques to establish a pathway for the synthesis and metabolism of left-handed astaxanthin, and achieves targeted synthesis of astaxanthin. Regulating pathways to reduce the content of by-products, enhancing the ability of bacterial strains to express exogenous genes, knocking out other competitive metabolic pathways, increasing oil storage content, and achieving an increase in astaxanthin production. At the same time, the optical isomerism of yeast astaxanthin and natural red algae astaxanthin is made consistent, resulting in a high antioxidant, fully left-handed configuration, and more environmentally friendly and sustainable production.

In terms of large-scale production of astaxanthin, Yuanyu Biotechnology has optimized its strain precision fermentation technology to direct precursor products towards astaxanthin as much as possible, reducing the generation of by-products and achieving the synthesis of high titer astaxanthin in a short period of time, thereby improving production efficiency. In addition, Yuanyu Biotechnology also prepared astaxanthin nanoemulsion through high-throughput enrichment and separation purification extraction technology to solve the problem of unstable and easily faded free astaxanthin.

The selection of “Synbio Suzhou Outstanding Enterprise in Synthetic Biology” this time is a high recognition of Protoga’s innovative achievements in the field of synthetic biology. Protoga will continue to be committed to promoting the development of innovative technologies for microalgae/microbial biosynthesis, continuously improving product quality and sustainability, and providing safer, more efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable solutions for multiple fields such as global health food, health products, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, etc.