November 25th, 2004－Tokyo - Ajinomoto Co., Inc. (Ajinomoto Group, President: Kunio Egashira,
Headquarter: Tokyo Japan) announces a new revolutionary enzymatic method to manufacture
peptides that have very important physiological functions. Future demands for peptides are
expected to be expanded remarkably by using this new manufacturing method.
Peptides are widely used in creating medicines where the total market size for peptide medicine is estimated to be approximately 10 billion USD. There are currently many types of manufacturing processes. These conventional synthetic methods require complicated steps for protection and deprotection of a protecting group in the amino acid and produce a high level of impurities and existence of the racemic mixtures. Standard purification procedures are very expensive and become impossible to meet this expanded demand for peptides easily with conventional peptide synthesis methods.
The AminoScience laboratories of Ajinomoto Co. Inc. have discovered a novel enzymatic method for the industrial production of alanylglutamine.
In this method, the amino acid is esterified, and this ester is enzymatically coupled with another amino acid (fig.1). This manufacturing method enables the production of not only dipeptides and oligopeptides, but also peptides including non-native types of amino-acid, so this method is a highly advantageous method.
Ajinomoto established this industrial production technology, and will launch alanylglutamine as the first product in the spring of 2005.
Though alanylglutamine has been expected to be an important product because of it’s beneficial effect to improve immune function, it was not used in the market because of it’s expensive price. However, it is expected that the alanylglutamine can be manufactured at a much lower cost by using this new
manufacturing method compared with conventional methods, and increased demand of alanylglutamine advances all over the world.
The potential market scale for the alanylglutamine is estimated at about 200t in the world.
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（fig.1 Manufacturing Process for the Peptide Production）
About AJINOMOTO GROUP
Ajinomoto Co., Inc. (Ajinomoto) was established in Japan in 1909. Over the last 90 years, Ajinomoto has grown rapidly through its expertise in fermentation technologies and business & geographical diversification, and is now an established seasoning and process food manufacture, and the world’s leading company of amino acid products, such as sports nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.
The group’s main products include seasonings, edible oils, processed foods, beverages and dairy
products. Its fine chemicals business covers pharmaceutical-use and feed-use amino acids,
sweeteners, functional nutritional foods, cosmetic ingredients and new drugs for diabetes and
cardiovascular diseases.
Today Ajinomoto has expanded its global networks that cover 23 countries and regions. These include 106 manufacturing plants in 15 countries and regions with 59 of these plants in Japan and 47 in the United States, Europe and Asia.
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