Yeast Chassis Stress Tolerance Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- 47.8% concentration. The top five assignees alone account for 2,295 of 4,801 records in scope — a field with a genuinely concentrated core, not a diffuse one.
- Filing has cooled from its 2018 peak. 161 records in 2018 fell to 53 by 2024, a -43% swing from 2021's 93 filings, though 2025-26 counts are still filling in under publication lag.
- Fermentation and diagnostics overlap heavily. 63.3% of records also carry C12Q measuring/testing classes alongside core C12N engineering claims, pointing to assay-linked chassis work as a distinct sub-cluster.
Filing growth compares 2021 (93 records) with 2024 (53) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 4,801 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent filings at the intersection of engineered or recombinant yeast host cells and documented stress-tolerance mechanisms — solvent tolerance, acid tolerance, osmotic stress, oxidative stress, heat shock and membrane stability — restricted to the core genetic-engineering and microorganism classification codes. It spans 4,801 published records from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off.
The scope deliberately pairs a host-organism term with a stress-response term, so it captures chassis engineering aimed at industrial robustness rather than yeast biology in general. Readers should treat patent families, not raw document counts, as the fairer unit when comparing assignees, since continuation and multi-jurisdiction filing inflate document totals unevenly across applicants.
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 4,801-record corpus: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 73 in 2017 to a peak of 161 in 2018, then eased over the following years; 2021's 93 filings dropped to 53 by 2024, a -43% move over that span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so the most recent years understate true filing activity.
IPC subclass composition
C12N (microorganisms and genetic engineering) anchors the field at 90.9% of records. C07K (peptides and proteins) and C12Q (enzyme/DNA measuring and testing) each appear in well over half of records, and C12P (fermentation and enzymatic synthesis) sits close behind — evidence that stress-tolerance chassis claims are routinely bundled with fermentation-process and assay claims rather than filed in isolation. Shares exceed 100% in total because a single record can carry several IPC classes.
Shares are the percentage of the 4,801 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Yeast Chassis Stress Tolerance with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about yeast chassis stress tolerance and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Yeast expressing glucoamylase with enhanced starch hydrolysis (US20210292776A1)
The present disclosure concerns recombinant yeast host cell for saccharification of a biomass. The recombinant yeast host cell has a genetic modification for expressing a heterologous polypeptide having glucoamylase activity (Penicillum oxalicum glucoamylase). In some embodiments, the heterologous polypeptide can comprise a signal sequence. The present disclosure also concerns a process for saccharification of a biomass using the recombinant yeast host cell as well as a process for fermenting the saccharified biomass into a fermentation product.Filed by Danstar Ferment AG, published 2021-09-23 — illustrates how stress-tolerance chassis claims are increasingly paired with specific enzymatic function rather than filed as standalone robustness claims.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5925523A | Intraction trap assay, reagents and uses thereof | 1,143 |
| 2 | WO1995019431A1 | Zinc finger protein derivatives and methods therefor | 1,119 |
| 3 | WO1998054311A1 | Zinc finger protein derivatives and methods therefor | 1,077 |
| 4 | US6200759B1 | Interaction trap assay, reagents and uses thereof | 1,069 |
| 5 | US6140466A | Zinc finger protein derivatives and methods therefor | 1,029 |
| 6 | US6242568B1 | Zinc finger protein derivatives and methods therefor | 966 |
| 7 | WO2001088197A2 | Methods and compositions for interaction trap assays | 901 |
| 8 | US6171820B1 | Saturation mutagenesis in directed evolution | 681 |
| 9 | US6361974B1 | Exonuclease-mediated nucleic acid reassembly in directed evolution | 605 |
| 10 | WO2002092780A2 | Novel antigen binding molecules for therapeutic, diagnostic, prophylactic, enzymatic, industrial, and agricul… | 575 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations within a searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence on the field's foundational assay and zinc-finger work, not as a ranking of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-outs from the concentration, trend and citation data that matter for deciding where to file and what to watch.
The core is genuinely concentrated
Just five assignees account for 2,295 of the 4,801 records in scope, and the top ten extend that to 57.2%. That is a dense core to file around, particularly given the strong co-assignee links among the leading names, which suggests coordinated prosecution rather than independent overlapping filings.
Cooling from a 2018 peak, not a collapse
Annual filings peaked at 161 in 2018 and had fallen to 53 by 2024, a -43% move from 2021's 93. The leading assignees show no filings in the latest complete year, which is consistent with a maturing core claim set rather than continued land-grab activity — but 2025-26 data is too thin under publication lag to call the trend finished.
Assay and fermentation claims dominate the bundle
C12N carries 90.9% of records, but C07K, C12Q and C12P each sit above half the corpus too. Claims rarely stand alone on stress-tolerance mechanism; they are drafted together with the assay method or the fermentation process the tolerance trait is meant to support.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to yeast chassis stress tolerance, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked leaders in this dataset cover 100 companies; a handful of names and their linked co-assignees account for close to half of all records, leaving a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants.
A single dominant filer
The leading assignee's count (1,266) is more than seven times the tenth-place figure (72), an unusually steep drop-off that signals a corpus anchored by one applicant's long-running filing programme rather than broad industry-wide activity.
Tight collaboration at the top
The strongest co-assignee pairs link the leading corporate assignee with named individual inventors at counts above 300, indicating that a large share of the top filer's output was co-assigned to specific inventor-holders rather than filed solely in the corporate name.
The historic leaders have gone quiet
None of the top-linked assignees show filings in the latest year captured. That does not necessarily mean exit from the field — publication lag means recent filings by any assignee may simply not have surfaced yet — but it does mean the current filing pool is not being replenished by the historic leaders.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Human Genome Sciences, Inc. | 0 | — |
| RUBEN STEVEN M | 0 | — |
| ROSEN CRAIG A | 0 | — |
| BARASH STEVEN C | 0 | — |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb Company | 0 | — |
| Incyte Corporation | 0 | — |
| NI JIAN | 0 | — |
| Diversa Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to a concentrated core with a thinning recent pipeline. Two paths follow from that.
Check freedom-to-operate against the concentrated core
With 57.2% of records held by ten linked assignees, any new filing on solvent-, acid- or osmotic-tolerance chassis claims should be checked against that core before drafting, particularly where co-assignee patterns suggest coordinated prosecution.
Run a freedom-to-operate search in EurekaExplore the under-claimed branches
Membrane remodelling, chaperone co-expression and multi-stress combinatorial strains show thinner claim density than the C12N core and may offer more open drafting space.
Explore white space in EurekaFrequently asked questions
One assignee leads with 1,266 records in this dataset, well ahead of the rest of the ranked field — the fifth-place holder has 173 and tenth place has 72. The top five assignees combined account for 47.8% of all 4,801 records in scope, and the top ten reach 57.2%. Strong co-assignee links among the leading names, some pairs exceeding 300 shared records, suggest the top of the field is more coordinated than a simple company ranking implies.
Filing peaked in 2018 at 161 records and has generally eased since, with 2021's 93 filings dropping to 53 by 2024, a -43% move. That said, 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete because publication typically lags actual filing by about 18 months, so the most recent years will fill in further and should not yet be read as a continuing decline.
C12N, covering microorganisms and genetic engineering, appears in 90.9% of the 4,801 records and anchors the field. C07K (peptides and proteins) and C12Q (enzyme and DNA measuring/testing) each appear in well over half of records, and C12P (fermentation and enzymatic synthesis) is close behind at 56.7%. This pattern shows that stress-tolerance claims are typically bundled with assay methods or fermentation-process claims rather than filed as standalone mechanism patents.
The core claim space around C12N genetic-engineering methods is dense and dominated by a handful of linked assignees, but adjacent branches such as membrane lipid remodelling for solvent tolerance, osmotic-stress transcription factor engineering, and combinatorial multi-stress chassis strains show comparatively thinner density in this dataset. These are reasonable starting points for a novelty search rather than guaranteed open ground, and should be checked against the full ranked assignee list before drafting.
Each patent record can be classified under multiple IPC subclasses at once — a single filing might claim both a genetic modification (C12N) and a diagnostic assay method (C12Q). The percentages given for each IPC subclass are each calculated against the same base of 4,801 total records, so they are independent shares that naturally sum past 100% rather than a breakdown of the corpus into non-overlapping buckets.
Research Yeast Chassis Stress Tolerance in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole yeast chassis stress tolerance corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.