zuChem Receives Phase II SBIR Award from the National Institutes of Health

Chicago, IL (April 29, 2015) – zuChem, Inc., an innovative supplier of glycochemicals and specialized sugars for the food ingredients, fine chemicals and related industries, today announced that it has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant totaling over $1.2MM by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant, entitled “High yield production of GDP-fucose for fucosylation of molecules,” will support expansion of zuChem’s ongoing programs to develop new cost-effective, scaleable methods to manufacture carbohydrate-based products of interest to the life sciences industry.

“Fucosylation is the process of adding fucose sugar units to a molecule. It is one of the most common sugar modifications found in nature and plays a key role in biological recognition events, including tissue development, cell adhesion, inflammation and tumor metastasis,” explained David Demirjian, Ph.D., President and CEO, zuChem. “Our system to produce l-fucose and custom fucosylated molecules opens up the ability to more easily synthesize a new generation of prebiotics and other nutritional products, as well as a variety of drug candidates for the treatment and prevention of many diseases.”

zuChem has an active program to develop a robust process technology platform for the cost-effective manufacture of a wide variety of fucosylated molecules. Recently zuChem was awarded a Phase II SBIR grant by the NIH to support development of methods to manufacture fucosylated human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), including 2’-fucosyllactose and 3′-fucosyllactose. HMOs are believed to play important roles in infant cognitive and immune development. This additional Phase II SBIR grant on the production of GDP-fucose will support zuChem’s expansion of its process technology platform in to additional areas of pharmaceutical interest.

About zuChem, Inc.

zuChem, Inc., headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, develops and commercializes innovative green, renewable manufacturing processes to produce unique carbohydrates and glycochemicals (varieties of specialized sugars) for human health and nutrition. The Company’s proprietary technology platform allows it to produce a variety of specialty sweeteners, pharmaceutical intermediates, nutritional prebiotics and other industrial bio-products using enzymatic, fermentation and synthetic biology technologies. Please visit www.zuchem.com or contact info@zuchem.com for more information.