I was wondering about the reasons that make the common commercial enzymes very expensive. I believe that the isolation, purification and immobilization steps for the enzymes are costly but is their any other reasons?
In my opinion the cost is directly related to the fact that the company who sell those enzymes are the owners of the patents. Of course that the production process has cost but is minimal compared whit the intellectual property of the product.
The cost could also be related to the scale of enzyme production and the exact market size for the enzyme. (This is applicable too for generic enzymes with expired patents). Research-grade commercial enzymes are usually produced in smaller batches as their shelf-life is limited and under less optimized fermentation conditions . Together with the higher purity required over industrial enzymes, the lower productivity and purification steps adds to the cost.
Cost of a particular enzyme is directly related to the steps (production, extraction, purification, concentration, stabilization/ immobilization) involved in its commercialization, extent to which enzyme is purified and yield of enzyme.
The efficiency and critical monitoring of the entire process, salaries of the research personnel, patents/copyrights/trademarks further add to the cost.
Moreover, the risks like chance spoilage of the entire lot by any means are also covered in the cost.
In my opinion the cost of an enzyme is directly related with its expression/secretion in the concerned organism.The quantity of an active enzyme that can be extracted after different process is an important factor in governing the price,though down stream processing is also an important factor in determining price
Thank you very much for the interaction, as long as these enzymes are expensive, in my research I'm trying to use them efficiently, by improving their re usability process, just to have an economic enzymatic method compared to the conventional methods.
It may help for such enzymes if you could find ways to a) use smaller quantities, b) use less-purified and perhaps less expensive forms (and 'complete' the purification yourself), c) boost their activities by various means, or d) re-use or re-cycle them to minimize costs.
If you are trying to work with enzymes you can try to immobilize them, so you improve the stability, and allow you to reuse the enzyme
What quantities are you using? For small quantities Anthony provided very good suggestions. For large quantities, you will find that these enzymes are produced not in small quantities, but in huge fermenters which extend from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor of the building--appearing like silos inside of the building, if you can picture that. Technically these enzymes are effective but may have a broad range of prices. Why? 1. The producing company may have a patent on it. 2. The company may deal in selling only large quantities, and if they do not sell $1MM or more to you, then they are raising prices to discourage your business since they feel that as a customer would be an insignificant player. That is simply the way some of the suppliers do business,, sorry to say.
Ahmad,
I am interested in the re-usability processes you are working on. How is enzyme activity maintained when you re-use them and how do you ensure no loss of activity
Generally, enzyme prices have declined a lot in the past due to better and better production processes.One has to distinguish between bulk and speciality enzymes.
Bulk enzymes such as amylases reach titers of 50 g/L and more in industrial fermentation and different competitors in the field have such products in the market, so prices have gone down. Accordingly, they are applied at large scale for food and feed production. Depending on the application their final enzyme purity can be somewhat low. So prices are low as well.
Speciality enzymes, e.g. for research or medical applications can have a small market and due to the small market there maybe only few or even only one supplier. Here, high puritiy is a must so that researchers can run their assays or diseases can be diagnosted without any bias. In addition, the effort to get such enzymes highly pure involves multiple expensive chromatographic steps. Purification can amount for 90% of total production costs for such products. Accordingly, such enzymes are often rather expensive.
Best.
Christoph
Dear Prof. Christoph Wittmann
Thank you very much for your valuable answer, actually I have a presentation in very important conference and I will talk a little bit about the enzymes cost obstacle. your answer is very helpful for me.
Regards
Ahmad Mustafa
Dear Philippa Ojimelukwe
Before conducting a re-usability study , it is very important optimizing the process conditions first. This often includes the enzyme load, reaction temperature, reactants molar ratio and time. it is important that you make sure you don't loose quantity if enzymes during the downstream processes such as filtration and washing if you are dealing with immobilized enzymes, as this affect the conversion in the next batch if no make up quantities of enzymes are added.
Also reducing the enzymatic reaction time is a crucial to prevent the shear stresses resulted from the mechanical agitator equipped in the reactor if your are doing the reaction in a STR. In my research I've added a very small quantity of an emulsifier (it was the targeted product) at zero time and the reaction time was reduced.
Regards
Ahmad Mustafa
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