Our GlymaxX® technology is based on the heterologous, cytosolic expression of a bacterial enzyme that redirects the de novo fucose synthesis pathway to a sugar nucleotide that cannot be metabolized by eukaryotic cells. While even low levels of expression of the deflecting enzyme mediate secretion of antibodies with minimized fucose content, this does not affect cell viability, growth, or productivity. In addition, GlymaxX® provides a stable level of afucosylation over an extensive number of cumulative population doublings.
In contrast to approaches where afucosylation is enforced by knocking out the fucosylation pathway, GlymaxX® allows the specific fucose level of an antibody to be adjusted if desired, also during large-scale manufacturing.
The GlymaxX® technology can also be applied to existing antibody producer cell lines or even entire cell expression platforms in a very short time frame, without altering their productivity.
