New Zealand company GlycoSyn is seeking new global customers for kifunensine, a key ingredient in the manufacture of a drug for the treatment of rare genetic disorders that is worth 20 times more than gold per gram.
The drug research, development and manufacturing unit of Callaghan Innovation has sold more than $16 million of clinical grade kifunensine to a US-based biotech company in the past seven years. It is now marketing it to other pharmaceutical companies to boost the export revenue that funds the business.
Kifunensine is used as an ingredient to make drugs that inhibit background degradation of vital elements such as enzymes. As well as helping treat genetic disorders, it could also potentially change proteins in vaccines and have even wider use in the fight against viruses.
GlycoSyn general manager Paul Benjes said his unit was one of a handful of places worldwide that produce the complex ingredient and the only one that met the high quality standards required for GMP (good manufacturing practice) which gave it a fourfold premium over research grade material.
"We have a process patent over the way we make it, rather than the material itself, which is a barrier to competition, particularly in the US where the patent holds," he said.
