Christian Schwarz | Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder
Numaferm
Christian is the co-founder and CSO of the biotech company Numaferm that was founded 2017 as a spin-off of the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. He is biochemist and biotechnologist by education and completed his PhD in the field of type 1 secretion systems at the same university between 2009 and 2012.
Appearances:
Festival of Biologics Day 1 @ 17:10
Disrupting Peptide Therapeutics: Numaferm’s Numaswitch Platform for Sustainable, Scalable, and Scarless GLP-1 Analog Manufacturing
The demand for high-purity, scalable, and cost-effective production of GLP-1 receptor agonists and related peptide therapeutics continues to rise—yet traditional synthesis approaches remain constrained by sustainability, scalability, and cost limitations. Christian Schwarz, PhD, Founder and CSO of Numaferm GmbH, introduces a new paradigm in peptein manufacturing with the Numaswitch platform: a fully biotechnological production system enabling the traceless, efficient, and sustainable manufacture of native peptides and proteins.
At the core of this platform is Numacut, a proprietary protease engineered to cleave after nearly all amino acids (except proline), enabling scarless removal of fusion tags and overcoming a longstanding limitation of conventional sequence-specific proteases like TEV. In tandem with Numaferm’s Switchtag technology, this platform allows seamless integration of non-canonical amino acids, high-purity expression, and simplified downstream processing.
Numaswitch offers production timelines of less than 2 weeks, scalability to 100 kg per campaign, and is free from toxic solvents, TFA, and non-sustainable reagents. Compared to traditional chemical synthesis, it delivers CO₂ footprint savings exceeding 90% and cost-of-goods reductions of over 85%, meeting increasing regulatory and environmental expectations.
These capabilities make Numaswitch a compelling solution for next-generation GLP-1 analogs, where molecular complexity, sustainability, and time-to-market are critical. Real-world applications will be discussed, highlighting how Numaferm's innovations translate into secure supply chains, lower environmental impact, and transformative economics for advanced peptide-based therapeutics.
Created by
Terrapinn is proud to be a member of isla.
Working together to build sustainable events