January 13, 2020, Chongqing, China—Porton Pharma Solutions Ltd. (SZSE: 300363, hereinafter referred to as "Porton" and "the company") today announced that its fermentation pilot laboratory located in its Changshou site was officially put into use, marking another important milestone of the strategic partnership between Porton and Codexis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDXS, hereinafter referred to as "Codexis") in the field of biocatalysis technology.

In 2018, Porton set up its technical platform including biocatalysis technology in its Shanghai R&D center. In order to further expand the commercial application value of biocatalysis technology in pharmaceutical process and to achieve mutual benefits, Porton and Codexis jointly announced the establishment of a strategic cooperation in April 2018. Under the terms of the collaboration, Codexis licenses the core elements of its biocatalysis technology to Porton, including its proprietary biocatalyst library, high-throughput screening and enzyme production technology. Codexis will also provide Porton with an exclusive priority channel of CodeEvolver ® protein engineering platform technology for the creation of new biocatalytic process solutions. Porton will install new operations to drive adoption and optimal application of these biocatalyst technologies into its custom contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) offerings to global pharmaceutical customers.

In 2019, Porton installed its catalysis technology lab and fermentation lab in its Shanghai R&D center. After the operation of its pilot fermentation lab in Chongqing site, which contains 5 liter, 20 liter and 300 liter fermentation tanks, Porton will be able to deliver kilogram level enzyme powder preparation and will meet the pilot scale production demand. Up to now, there are 14 R&D staff and technicians in Porton’s biocatalysis team. The team has undertaken 38 biocatalysis projects in 2019, successfully realizing the industrial application of the technology and fulfilling customers' requirements for quality, speed and cost control. Our collaborative service has enabled the customers from both developed market and emerging market, such as US, Europe, Japan as well as China biotechs to innovate and industrialize with better and effective options.

The production process of traditional pharmaceutical industry is complex with high pressure in environmental protection and harsh condition requirements for special reactions. The development of green pharmaceutical technology is key to break the bottleneck of environmental pollution, which limits the development of pharmaceutical industry. Biocatalysis is a low-cost, high stability, high-quality frontier technology. By utilizing the corresponding enzymes, the multi-step reactions in the chemical pathway can be realized by one-step enzymatic reaction, and has the advantages of high selectivity, high efficiency, mild conditions and so on. Based on these advantages, biocatalysis technology will play an important role in the global pharmaceutical industry.

"Codexis is a leading technology company in the protein engineering, while Porton is a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization which serves more than 300 projects annually,” said Oliver Ju, Chairman and CEO of Porton, “I see from the collaboration between Porton and Codexis in the past one and a half years that it has brought about a win-win situation for not only us, but also to our customers. I’m looking forward to continuing to provide this advanced green, sustainable and truly needy technology for customers around the world through in-depth cooperation with Codexis, and pushing each other's strategic cooperation to a broader space."

"It's my great honor to witness the launch of Porton's pilot fermentation laboratory in Chongqing. Since Codexis and Porton reached our strategic cooperation in April 2018, we have been maintaining close collaboration in biocatalysis technology,” said Pierre Brazeau, Vice President, Business Development of Codexis, “Porton has proven to be an exceptional partner for Codexis in the use of biocatalysis technology in the Pharmaceutical industry. We hope to achieve real value through our strategic collaboration.”

About Porton Pharma Solutions
Porton Pharma Solutions is an industry-leading partner and provider of custom active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) development and manufacturing services to the global drug industry (SZSE, Stock Code 300363). Backed by more than 2,000 customer-centric employees, cutting-edge Process R&D Centers, USFDA, PMDA and EMA-inspected cGMP production sites and marketing offices located across Asia, North America and Europe, Porton helps its customers more efficiently deliver improved health outcomes to their patients through chemical process innovation, rapid scale-up and high-quality, cost-effective manufacture of APIs and/or drug intermediates.
Learn more by visiting www.porton.cn.

About Codexis, Inc.
Codexis is a leading protein engineering company that applies its proprietary CodeEvolver® technology to develop proteins for a variety of applications, including as biocatalysts for the commercial manufacture of pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals and industrial enzymes, and enzymes as biotherapeutics and for use in molecular diagnostics. Codexis’ proven technology enables improvements in protein performance, meeting customer needs for rapid, cost-effective and sustainable manufacturing in multiple commercial-scale implementations of biocatalytic processes.
For more information, see www.codexis.com.