ArcticZymes granted NOK 1.65 million funding from Innovation Norway for a SAN-HQ upscaling project

Tromsø, Norway, 20^th May 2020 – Biotec Pharmacon (OSE: Biotec) announces that its subsidiary, ArcticZymes AS, has been granted up to NOK 1.65 million by Innovation Norway for a project to increase the manufacturing scale of its SAN-HQ enzyme

ArcticZymes’ Salt Active Nuclease High Quality (SAN-HQ) enzyme offers gene therapy and vaccine customers a more cost effective and technically superior solution for removing contaminating DNA during the manufacturing process of therapeutic viruses. The project will accelerate ongoing efforts to scale production capacity and is estimated to be completed within 8-10 months.

The company entered the therapeutic segment with its SAN portfolio in 2016. Since then it has rapidly grown its customer base, and in 2019 sales revenues accounted for 25% of total sales. Customers initially start out purchasing small quantities of SAN-HQ, and then quickly scale their manufacturing in order to achieve the batch sizes required for pre-commercial and future commercial requirements. Furthermore, supply of SAN-HQ has the potential to be expanded into our partners developing viral based vaccines against COVID-19.

The growing demand of the SAN-HQ enzyme requires a timely effort to scale the manufacturing of the enzyme in order to seamlessly cater for longer-term customer supply.

ArcticZymes AS, CEO, Jethro Holter said:

“ArcticZymes has quickly achieved a strong commercial foothold in therapeutics by offering gene therapy and vaccine manufacturers unique enzyme technologies to streamline their production processes. This project will ensure that ArcticZymes accelerates its efforts to scale SAN-HQ manufacturing to satisfy growing commercial demand. We are grateful to Innovation Norway for supporting the project and recognizing its underlying value. The funding enables ArcticZymes to invest in more resources and fast track its endeavours to further scale SAN-HQ production and expand its support towards COVID-19 initiatives.”

Thomas Stien, Financial advisor, Innovation Norway, added:

“As part of the Norwegian government’s efforts to limit the effects of the coronavirus eruption, Innovation Norway has been given an increased limit for innovation grants aimed at companies with growth ambitions. The grant will help companies continue to pursue good innovation projects – or facilitate new ones.

This project shows that ArcticZymes sees the opportunity in the situation and prepares to deal with the challenges in a longer perspective – both to strengthen the company’s competitiveness and to prepare for further growth.”

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