Amyris Achieves Key Milestone in Major Drug Discovery Collaboration

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Nov. 16, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Amyris, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMRS), the industrial bioscience company, is pleased to announce that just months after initiating a collaboration with one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, it has successfully achieved the first milestone under the agreement. This milestone resulted in the creation of a robust, sensitive activity assay for an oncology target in a live yeast strain. This high-throughput assay enables screening for chemical diversity found in nature using Amyris’s proprietary µPharm™ platform, with the potential to provide previously inaccessible molecule targets.

The µPharm platform combines two powerful technologies that can significantly accelerate and reduce the cost of new drug discovery. The Amyris platform is groundbreaking in its ability to design and scale molecules that are becoming disruptive workhorses across several industries. This capability is unique and allows broad access to a significant variety of naturally-evolved molecules in a rapid, high-throughput format. Active molecules can be scaled for production in yeast, further tested, and developed into market-ready pharmaceuticals at a cost and speed that the company believes has not been realized before in the pharmaceutical industry.

 “We’re excited by how quickly we’ve achieved initial success in this project for one of the largest and most innovative companies in the sector,” said John Melo, Amyris President & CEO. “We believe our technology platform is well suited to efficiently drive advancements in drug discovery while meeting our partners’ unique requirements and helping to save lives. Our demonstrated capabilities have led to signing several partnership agreements with leading global pharmaceutical companies this year. We are achieving in months what these companies have been chasing for years.”

Continued Melo, “Along with more than doubling our revenue this year we are accelerating time to market for our biopharma partners. Our work to replace mammalian cells, deliver better antibiotics and discover new oncology treatments has the potential to transform drug discovery and make more available leading treatments to improve the lives of patients throughout the world.”

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 StatementsThis 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 the Amyris µPharm platform technology enabling development of pharmaceuticals at a cost and speed sufficient to efficiently drive advancements in drug discovery, continued achievement of, and pace of achievement for collaboration milestones, and annual revenue expectations 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  the company's liquidity and ability to fund operating and capital expenses, Amyris's reliance on third parties to achieve its goals, timing and execution risks associated with development and manufacturing, potential delays or failures in development, production and commercialization of products, and other risks detailed in the “Risk Factors” section of Amyris’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed on November 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, the Amyris logo and µPharm 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]

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