This project was early in my career when I worked for Bio-Technical Resources in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The BOC Group asked us to assist them with performing a due diligence evaluation of the Delta Biotechnology Ltd process to manufacture recombinant human serum albumin (HSA) in yeast. Delta Biotechnology was, at the time, a subsidiary of Bass PLC, a British brewing company. The original idea was to engineer the HSA gene into brewer’s yeast used to brew beer. Once the beer was brewed, the yeast would be recovered and expression of HSA would be induced. This, theoretically, reduced the HSA manufacturing costs by avoiding the cost of growing the yeast initially. Eventually, someone realized that it would probably be a public relations nightmare when word got out that Bass Pale Ale contained human blood proteins. At that point, they separated from the brewing and focused on an entirely separate manufacturing process.

For this project, we subcontracted part of the due diligence evaluation to a very experience bioprocessing expert from a Chicago engineering company and the two of us, along with a BOC vice president, traveled to Nottingham to meet with the folks from Delta Biotechnology and evaluate their process (yes, we also evaluated their beer while we were there, including lifting a few pints at the oldest pub in the UK). We then compiled an assessment of the technology with a capital and operating cost model of a manufacturing plant into a final evaluation report for the client. Shortly after the review was completed, BOC acquired Delta Biotechnology and their HSA process.

Years later, when I worked at Middough in Chicago, I worked with some of the engineers that had worked with the gentleman that I traveled to England with. Delta Biotechnology had a number of owners before being acquired by Novozymes, the spinoff of the Novo Nordisk enzyme division that I worked for after I left Bio-Technical Resources. It really can be a small world at times.