Dyadic in high profile collaboration with China’s pharma giant Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine for biologic drug development

Dyadic International Inc (NASDAQ:DYAI) announced a collaboration on Thursday with Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Company Limited (SSE:600276) to channel Dyadic’s proprietary C1 gene expression system to develop selected Hengrui biologic drugs. Headquartered in China, the Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Company clocked up revenue of over $3.3 billion in 2019. It has six new molecular entities approved in China as well more than 30 programs in clinical development in China, Australia EU and the US across oncology, anesthesiology, analgesics, autoimmune, metabolic and cardiovascular areas. "We are very excited to partner with Hengrui, one of the most innovative and inventive global biopharmaceutical companies,” Dyadic CEO Mark Emalfarb said in a statement. READ: Dyadic reveals rising R&D revenue in 2Q results from a bevy of research collaborations “This collaboration also highlights the appeal of C1's value proposition, producing cell lines at higher expression levels and lower cost, to address global demand for more efficient biomanufacturing processes of biologic vaccines and drugs. We are looking forward to a successful collaboration with Hengrui," he added. Dr Lianshan Zhang, who is the president of R&D at Hengrui, said the group is interested in Dyadic's C1 technology, which has potential to help the company produce biotherapeutics in a “more cost-effective fashion.” “As a result, we are leveraging our combined expertise and working closely with Dyadic as we share their vision of creating biomedicines to benefit patients globally," Dr Zhang added. Founded in 1979, Dyadic engages in the large-scale manufacture of low-cost enzymes and other proteins for US and international markets. It leverages its proprietary C1 gene expression system - a fungal expression technology for producing enzymes - to help bring biologic vaccines, therapeutic enzymes, proteins, biosimilars and drugs to market faster and at a lower cost. Dyadic has patented its proprietary filamentous fungus, Myceliophthora thermophila, nicknamed C1 and the associated molecular tools used to engineer the C1 cells to express and manufacture large volumes of low-cost biologic products such as enzymes and proteins. The C1 fungus is a living cell that has been bioengineered by Dyadic scientists for more than two decades. Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive