Services & Laboratory facilities
The main service Enzyscreen provides is the rapid and high-quality performance of custom screenings for enzymes for the pharmaceutical and fine-chemical industry.
Enzyscreen has its main laboratory facilities in the Leiden BioScience Park in The Netherlands. Sensitive and rapid analysis for product-formation is generally performed by LC-MS.
Custom screenings are usually performed under the following conditions:
- The customer will fully own the intellectual rights for biocatalysts found to perform the target reaction, and can be assured full secrecy
- Best-performing enzymes will be handed over to customer at end of project
- Project fee consists of a basic fee supplemented (in case of succes only) with a (previously agreed) one-off success fee
As an additional service, Enzyscreen acts an a consultant : it assists in the implementation of the miniaturised growth systems.
Enzyscreen founders
Wouter A. Duetz, CEO of Enzyscreen, worked on oxygenases involved in the degradation of toluene and other aromatic compounds at the Netherlands National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) from 1986 to 1996, and received his PhD from the University of Groningen in 1996, with Prof. Dick Janssen as his mentor. From 1996 until 2002, he headed a research group at the the Institute of Biotechnology of the ETH Zurich focussed on the screening for new enzyme activities He (co)-authored 35 scientific publications and patents.
Bernard Witholt has been Professor of Biotechnology at the ETH Zurich since 1992, where he heads the Institute of Biotechnology (www.biotech.biol.ethz.ch). From 1972 to 1992 he was a member of the Biochemistry Laboratory of the University of Groningen, where he co-founded the Groningen Biotechnology Center (1980), the Zernike Science Park (1983), the BIOSON Institute (1987), and the Groningen Biosciences and Biotechnology Institute (1992).
Wouter Duetz Bernard Witholt
