Codexis, Inc. is a protein engineering company that develops enzymes for pharmaceutical, food and medical applications.[2][3]
Codexis is based in Redwood City, CA and was incorporated in 2002. It went public in April 2010 on NASDAQ,[4] and in October, acquired Maxygen's MolecularBreeding technology portfolio.[5]
Codexis won the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the
In 2017, the company entered a partnership with Tate & Lyle to provide research and development for the production of new ingredients.[8] That same year, Codexis announced a collaboration with Nestle to provide enzymes for metabolic disorders.[9]
In 2017, Codexis developed a recombinant phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) enzyme, to act as a substitute phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) enzyme for people who suffer from phenylketonuria.[3] The enzyme was in-licensed by Nestle Health Sciences.[3]
In 2020, Takeda Pharmaceutical announced a collaboration with Codexis to research and create gene therapies for rare diseases, including lysosomal storage disorders.[10]
In June 2020, they announced a partnership with Molecular Assemblies to engineer enzymes for DNA synthesis.[11]
Codexis uses directed evolution to develop its enzymes.[12][13] Using this method, scientists genetically engineer genes, then screen the enzymes produced to see if it creates the properties needed for a specific reaction.[13][7] Their protein engineering platform, called CodeEvolver, uses machine learning and high-throughput experimentation to learn protein sequence changes and their impacts on protein function.[3][14]
