Col­lab­or­a­tion with BRAIN Biotech: Pro­tein engin­eer­ing suc­cess­fully improves struc­tur­al pro­teins for per­form­ance materials

BRAIN Biotech AG, lead­ing pro­vider of solu­tions for the bio­lo­giz­a­tion of industry, and AMSilk GmbH, a glob­al lead­er in advanced mater­i­als made from spider silk-based pro­teins, announce the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the first phase of a devel­op­ment col­lab­or­a­tion. After a year of work­ing togeth­er, they have spe­cific­ally optim­ized a nat­ur­al struc­tur­al pro­tein and sub­sequently registered the first PCT pat­ent (“Pat­ent Cooper­a­tion Treaty”) for this process.

The aim of the col­lab­or­a­tion is to advance the devel­op­ment of high-per­form­ance pro­tein-based fibers for the per­form­ance mater­i­als mar­ket, with the spe­cif­ic prop­er­ties of these struc­tur­al pro­teins being optim­ized for vari­ous high-per­form­ance fields of applic­a­tion in the tex­tile sec­tor. In addi­tion to the eco­nom­ic dimen­sion, both com­pan­ies pur­sue a com­mon stra­tegic goal: of build­ing a more sus­tain­able future through bio-based solu­tions in the tex­tile industry.

AMSilk has developed a wide range of use cases for its spider silk-based pro­teins, from devel­op­ing the lead­ing spin­ning pro­cess for silk pro­tein fibers, to trans­form­ing pro­teins into silk beads, gels and solu­tions to unlock the power of their coat­ing effects. Due to its unique com­bin­a­tion of strength and flex­ib­il­ity, spider silk is the gold stand­ard of bioin­dus­tri­al mater­i­als. AMSilk’s recom­bin­ant pro­teins are wholly bio­de­grad­able, can be fully recycled and con­tain no traces of micro­plastics. AMSilk’s silk pro­tein-based fibers set com­pletely new stand­ards with­in the appar­el industry. They offer extremely broad per­form­ance char­ac­ter­ist­ics and are also a high-qual­ity altern­at­ive with low CO2 con­sump­tion com­pared to oth­er nat­ur­al or fossil-based materials.

The struc­tur­al pro­teins under­ly­ing AMSilk’s pro­tein fibers can be mod­i­fied at the amino acid level using BRAIN Biotech’s tech­no­lo­gies so that the products can be tailored to spe­cif­ic mar­ket requirements.

The suc­cess of this stra­tegic R&D col­lab­or­a­tion is based on the use of BRAIN Biotech’s ration­al design in pro­tein engin­eer­ing. Using this tech­no­logy, BRAIN Biotech has built a suc­cess­ful track record over many years in the enzyme tech­no­logy unit at Zwin­gen­berg. BRAIN Biotech had already suc­cess­fully used its pro­tein engin­eer­ing strategy in the devel­op­ment of a vari­ety of pro­tein and enzyme products in order to tail­or them for indus­tri­al applic­a­tions. In addi­tion to AMSilk’s sci­entif­ic expert­ise in the field of spider silk-based pro­teins, AMSilk also con­trib­utes an under­stand­ing of cus­tom­er and mar­ket require­ments. The res­ults of the col­lab­or­a­tion that have now been achieved show once again that the applied sci­entif­ic strategy can lead to com­pletely new products.

Dr. Alex­an­der Pelzer, Head of Research & Devel­op­ment at BRAIN Biotech at the Zwin­gen­berg site, emphas­izes: ​“Our suc­cess­ful ration­al pro­tein engin­eer­ing is based on the com­bin­a­tion of two factors: the exper­i­ence of our team – in con­junc­tion with sequen­cing and struc­ture-based bioin­form­at­ics meth­ods, includ­ing AI pre­dic­tions. The stra­tegic R&D part­ner­ship with AMSilk is an excel­lent example of the power of our pro­tein engin­eer­ing pipeline.”

Pelzer cites power­ful bioin­form­at­ics includ­ing the vari­ous AI approaches used by the exper­i­enced pro­tein engin­eer­ing experts at BRAIN Biotech as the basis for pro­tein engin­eer­ing, tail­or­ing their approach to each spe­cif­ic inquiry. Draw­ing on the pro­found exper­i­ence of their team, sug­ges­ted optim­iz­a­tions are then imple­men­ted using molecu­lar bio­logy and tested in the labor­at­ory. After suc­cess­fully pro­du­cing and char­ac­ter­iz­ing these struc­tur­al pro­teins on a mil­li­liter scale, BRAIN Biotech scales up the top can­did­ates in a fer­menter on a liter scale, mak­ing them avail­able to AMSilk for applic­a­tion testing.

Alex­an­der Pelzer adds: ​“Many of the pro­tein fibers that we have designed and man­u­fac­tured at BRAIN Biotech showed greatly improved prop­er­ties in real applic­a­tions. We are very pleased that once again we have been able to con­trib­ute to the suc­cess of a cus­tom­er – in this case AMSilk.”

Gudrun Vogtentanz, Chief Sci­entif­ic Officer at AMSilk, says about the cooper­a­tion: ​“Togeth­er with BRAIN Biotech, we are bring­ing tail­or-made mater­i­al solu­tions to the mar­ket that not only meet the needs of cus­tom­ers but are sus­tain­able. This will enable us to revo­lu­tion­ize the per­form­ance mater­i­als mar­ket in the long term, which is cur­rently dom­in­ated by fossil-based tex­tiles. With their years of pro­tein engin­eer­ing expert­ise and with our com­mon vis­ion, BRAIN Biotech is an ideal fit as a devel­op­ment partner.”