Technology

Importance of Sugars and Carbohydrates

Sugars are among the most fundamental chemicals found in nature. They are important in human health and nutrition, and in the regulation of a variety of processes in our bodies. In nature, certain sugars are made in large quantities through a series of complex biochemical reactions.

While the extraction of naturally occurring sugars to make commodity products, such as table sugar, is well developed and inexpensive, modifying natural sugars by traditional chemistry methods has proven either too expensive or impossible for all except the simplest of modifications.

For decades researchers have known there was a tremendous commercial opportunity to be unlocked by making and modifying sugars. Products like the sweetener sucralose or the pharmaceutical building block L-ribose represent the tip of the iceberg of the commercial opportunity for modified sugars (aka glycochemicals).

However, despite their biological and commercial importance, the scaleable, inexpensive production of many non-commodity sugars has been extremely difficult to date. With new breakthroughs in biotechnology and chemistry such as those offered by zuChem, the promise of glycotechnology is now within reach.

zuChem Technology Platform

zuChem’s technology platform is a combination of proprietary process technology and know-how useful in the production of many commercially relevant carbohydrate bioproducts. These products range from food ingredients to specialty chemicals and new glycoconjugates with high diversity for drug discovery applications. The methods we develop are readily scalable.

Specifically the zuChem Platform Technology includes:

• Proprietary carbohydrate conversion enzymes
• Proprietary carbohydrate production strains
• Metabolic engineering systems
• Broad platform rare sugar production technology
• Broad platform activated sugar building block technology
• Sugar linking and attachment technology