Traditional chemical routes for oligonucleotide synthesis using phosphoramidite chemistry have drawbacks relating to product yield and purity. These factors have stimulated considerable interest in biocatalytic approaches to oligonucleotide synthesis to overcome the chemical synthesis limitations and help deliver upon a rapidly expanding pipeline of future therapeutic oligonucleotides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enzymes offer the benefits of sustainability, selectivity and cost reduction in pharmaceutical synthesis. Oligonucleotides (and their building blocks – blockmers) have diverse structural complexity and often incorporate unnatural nucleotide modifications to improve their therapeutic potential. Enzymatic synthesis therefore requires a sophisticated suite of enzyme technologies to effectively tackle both building block and strand construction, whilst accommodating diverse unnatural modifications. Almac has developed a range of biocatalytic products and services to facilitate the challenges posed in biocatalytic oligonucleotide synthesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Building upon the strong biocatalytic technology base already available at Almac we have successfully applied this technology to oligonucleotide synthesis using Almac\u2019s selectAZyme\u2122 panels for production of both single stranded and double stranded products. The technology can be applied to synthesis of siRNA duplexes and other therapeutic oligonucleotides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n