Düsseldorf, Sept. 8^th 2009 – The Düsseldorf-based biotech company evocatal has developed a novel process for the production of the horse liver enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase in bacteria - one of the most widely used enzymes becomes available on a large scale.

The enzyme „alcohol-dehydrogenase“ from horse liver (HLADH) is one of the most widely used enzymes in organic chemistry. Its excellent catalytic properties lead to numerous successful syntheses and to the impressive number of more than a thousand scientific publications.
evocatal has now established a process to produce this enzyme in bacteria on an industrial scale, avoiding the use of animal sources. “We tap the high potential of modern biotechnology”, says Dr. Michael Puls, CMO at evocatal. “With the new process we have circumvented all the problems associated with the classical process – for the first time we produce this highly interesting enzyme on a technical scale avoiding the animal source.”
This opens new vistas for industrial users: Until now the enzyme was isolated from actual equine liver in a labor-intensive and hence expensive process. Due to the limited availability of the raw material, only relatively small quantities were produced and thus the enzyme was applied in industrial processes only in rare cases. This limitation has now been overcome. 
“At the same time we have solved the problems connected with the separation of the two variants of the enzyme (isoenzymes) that naturally occur in the animal source” states Dr. Christian Leggewie, CSO at evocatal. “We now produce both isoenzymes separately, so our customers can make use of the advantages of each of them in particular.” The isoenzyme E will is already available, some variants will follow until the end of the year.


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