Arranta Bio announces the acquisition of Captozyme™, creating a Center for microbiome development and clinical supply

Arranta Bio (“Arranta”) announced today the acquisition of Captozyme™, and with it the establishment of Arranta’s Center of Excellence for process and analytical development and early clinical supply for microbiome clients with the transfer of the Captozyme team and facilities in Gainesville, FL to Arranta.

Formed in 2009, Captozyme has been the leader in providing development services to microbiome pioneers with a team that has developed processes for over 125 different species and 80 different genera over the past decade. In 2018, Captozyme established GMP clinical capacity and has successfully scaled processes to 400L scale fermentation through to lyophilization and encapsulation. The team has built significant know-how of handling, scaling, processing, and encapsulation of strict anaerobes.

Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Captozyme, Dr. Aaron Cowley, now Arranta’s CTO, said,

“Having spent ten years developing processes for clients with over 125 bacteria, including difficult to make organisms, I am delighted that our team will now increase our capacity to serve the microbiome sector as part of Arranta, and we will be able to shepherd clients’ products through the clinical phases to commercial with our enhanced capabilities.”

Mark Bamforth, founder, President and CEO at Arranta, said,

“We welcome the team from Captozyme into Arranta and applaud the foresight of its founders, lead by Dr. Cowley, to build expertise in the microbiome field. Now, we can accelerate the delivery of live biopharmaceutical products (LBPs) to the clinic for clients and, in time, through licensure to patients worldwide.”

Arranta’s goal is to be the best-in-class microbiome contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), providing LBPs for microbiome-related product pioneers by bacterial fermentation, isolation, lyophilization and encapsulation.

As announced, Arranta recently completed a funding round with Ampersand Capital Partners, company founders and colleagues, and a strategic investment from Thermo Fisher Scientific. Arranta is establishing late-stage clinical and commercial-ready capacity at a new facility in Watertown, MA, which is scheduled to come online by Q3 2020.

As part of the transaction, Captozyme has spun out its enzyme therapeutic assets into a newly formed biopharmaceutical company, Oxidien Pharmaceuticals, LLC, to continue clinical development under the leadership of Captozyme’s outgoing CEO, Dr. Helena Cowley.

Almost 200 companies are actively exploring the linkage between diseases and the microbiome – millions of bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses that live inside and on the human body – in order to identify therapeutic targets. Scientists have called it the second genome, and in fact, the number of genes in the microbes making up one person’s microbiome is 200 times the number in the human genome.

Over the last decade, there has been rapid acceleration in scientific understanding of the composition and functions of the gut microbiota. Arranta is proud to be the leading CDMO supporting the supply needs of these innovators.