Amyris Enters Collaboration with Top 10 Pharmaceutical Company for Biosynthetic Drug Discovery

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Oct. 28, 2016 -- Amyris, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMRS), the industrial bioscience company, is pleased to announce it has entered into a research agreement with a commercial license option with one of the top 10 largest global pharmaceutical companies. Under the terms of the agreement, the collaboration will use Amyris's µPharm^TM platform technology to develop a customized library of natural and natural-like compounds to test its partner’s target antibiotic therapeutic.

Nature has been a great source for therapeutics, ranging from antibiotics to statins that lower cholesterol levels; however, Nature's potential is often under-utilized due to scarcity or unavailability. Amyris's µPharm platform technology enables an integrated discovery and production process for therapeutic compounds. It not only provides access to scarce natural compounds, but also creates new diversity based on natural compound scaffolds.

“We’re pleased to have executed our second large µPharm collaboration during the second half of 2016 as planned,” said John Melo, Amyris President and CEO. “We are continuing to experience significant momentum in our business and within biopharma alone we have now executed agreements with three of the top companies in the industry, each leaders in their fields.”

"Adding another top pharmaceutical company partner to our collaboration portfolio demonstrates the robust growth opportunity we see in the space," said Cynthia Bryant, Amyris Senior Vice President Corporate Development & Collaborations. "The flexibility and power of Amyris’s technology platform can be harnessed for a variety of applications and within biopharma can open a new area of compounds that have never been accessible for new drug discovery."

Amyris will utilize the µPharm platform technology to develop a library of natural and natural-like compounds and test the efficacy of those compounds in vivo for hits against the identified target. This is a different approach than traditional high throughput screening, which typically applies thousands of chemical compounds in in vitro screens to find a drug candidate. Instead, the µPharm platform starts with the target to improve efficiency, identifies candidate natural compound structures, and then creates diversity around those structures for in vivo testing.

About Amyris

Amyris is the integrated renewable products company that is enabling the world’s leading brands to achieve sustainable growth. Amyris applies its innovative bioscience solutions to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules and produce specialty ingredients and consumer products. The company is delivering its No Compromise® products across a number of markets, including specialty and performance chemicals, flavors and fragrances, cosmetics ingredients, and pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. More information about the company is available at www.amyris.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements, and any statements other than statements of historical facts could be deemed to be forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements regarding future events (such as Amyris µPharm platform technology successfully enabling an integrated discovery and production process for therapeutic compounds, and the capabilities and benefits of such technology for development of libraries of compounds and for manufacturing scale-up) that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on management's current expectations and actual results and future events may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties, including risks related to manufacturing capacity at Amyris’s Brotas facility, delays or failures in development, production and commercialization of products, liquidity and ability to fund capital expenditures, Amyris’s reliance on third parties to achieve its goals, and other risks detailed in the “Risk Factors” section of Amyris’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed on August 9, 2016. Amyris disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

Amyris and the Amyris logo are registered trademarks of Amyris, Inc.

Contact:
Peter DeNardo
Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications
Amyris, Inc. 
+1 (510) 740-7481
[email protected]
[email protected]