Energy BioSystems Corp. Changes Name to Enchira Biotechnology Corp.

Energy BioSystems Corp. (The Woodlands, TX) announced that its shareholders approved the renaming of the company to Enchira Biotechnology Corp. at the company's annual meeting. The name change reflects the company's expanded strategic direction to apply its proprietary directed evolution technology to broader markets, including pharmaceutical, ag-bio, chemical, and industrial enzyme applications. The name change will be effective June 9, after appropriate filings.

Since 1993, Enchira, as Energy BioSystems, has been a leader in applying molecular biology and microbial processes to remove sulfur from petrochemical products for cleaner reactions and lower costs. The company invested more than $70 million in its core technology and is now applying it to diverse markets.

Enchira's directed evolution platform includes a new gene shuffling technology—named RACHITT, for "random chimeragenesis on transient templates"—designed to efficiently create related versions of genes of interest to the pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial enzyme industries.

"Changing the name of our company is another step in our continued evolution, from a single process operation to a technology platform company applying a unique technology that can help enterprises in multiple industries develop better gene-based products," said Enchira president and CEO Peter Policastro.

"Current events in biotechnology, such as the human genome project, are creating many opportunities for developing new cures for diseases and beneficial gene-based products. As the biotech industry has evolved, so have we, as we now seek to capitalize on our biotechnology capabilities and expertise. This evolution of ours will lead us into a higher-growth industry and into more exciting product development opportunities, both new and complementary to our existing business strategies," Policastro said.

Enchira's RACHITT technology is part of the company's directed evolution technology platform that rapidly creates hybrid genes that code for proteins with desired characteristics. New genes are created in a controlled laboratory setting by combining genes or gene fragments to produce chimeric genes that will direct the synthesis of these highly optimized proteins. Enchira believes that its RACHITT technology, coupled with its high throughput screening capabilities, offers its partners substantial advantages over competing technologies.

"Last year, we accelerated the building of our directed evolution platform by investing in the development of the RACHITT technology as well as of new high-throughput screening (HTS) technology, to complement our existing strengths in metabolic engineering and bioprocessing," said Peter Policastro. "With this platform now in place, we can screen large numbers of alternatives from gene shuffled libraries. These capabilities allow the company to expand our business base into the pharmaceutical, ag-bio, chemical, and industrial enzyme markets."

Edited by David Nakamura