US protein engineering company Codexis has signed a platform agreement with Novartis, granting the Swiss pharmaceutical producer a non-exclusive license to its proprietary CodeEvolver protein technology.

Novartis will use the license to develop novel performance enzymes for use in drug manufacture. Upon completion of the technology transfer, the CodeEvolver protein engineering platform will be located at an undisclosed Novartis site.

Terms of the agreement foresee Novartis making an upfront payment, milestone payments upon the satisfactory completion of technology transfer and payments for improvements to the platform technology.

Redwood, California-based Codexis also will be eligible to receive payments for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) produced with enzymes developed by Novartis using the CodeEvolver technology. Additionally, it will receive certain rights for future purchases of enzymes developed and sourced by the drugmaker, using the technology.

John Nicols, Codexis’ president and CEO said Novartis has been a “highly valued customer for nearly a decade, and we’ve been very pleased to see the accelerating and widening of our R&D collaborations together especially over the past several years.”

Novartis, said Nichols, will be the latest leading pharmaceutical company to validate the very wide applicability of enzymatic catalysis across its extensive small molecule drug pipeline.