Enzyme Engineering Platform For Fast And Sustainable Production Of Ingredients

Changes in consumer behavior and surging industrial demand are driving forces in advancing biomanufacturing technological advances. Enzyme-based biocatalysis is the centerpiece of many such industrial applications. However, while improvement in quality attributes could be observed by enzymatic biocatalysis, natural enzymes are often susceptible to low catalytic efficiency due to externalities ranging from temperature changes and pH levels.

Despite recent breakthroughs in enzyme engineering, the conquest to identify the right enzyme could still be a stumbling block for many firms. Screening millions of variants to discover the right enzyme requires years of R&D, potentially setting the company back by a few million dollars.

A startup has developed an enzyme engineering platform to identify and engineer novel enzymes to counteract these issues with an emphasis on their environmentally friendly process.

With proprietary microfluidics technology, the enzyme engineering platform can build and test millions of enzymes ten times faster than existing technologies while boosting the chance of success in developing the most effective enzymes by 200 times. The startup supports the development process ranging from the screening of enzymes variants to full enzyme engineering, and scaling of desired enzymes to accelerate sustainable biomanufacturing for a wide range of applications. The company is seeking R&D collaborations with partners seeking the forementioned developmental expertise.

The technology enables an ultra high-throughput enzyme engineering platform by employing proprietary microfluidics technology. In addition, the startup has developed a combination of a proprietary chip design, generic detection assays, and intelligent hardware for creating the fastest enzyme engineering platform globally. The main features of this technology compared to current state of the art robotics are; the current technology is 1000 times faster in enzyme screening, has a 200 times higher chance of success, and has successfully studied 10 million experimental enzyme variants per day compared to 1000 variants per day for robotics. Furthermore, there is no waste generated in the development process making this an eco-friendly alternative to robotic-microplate technology which produces biohazard waste.

The platform can be used to

• Identify more efficient substrate or target or compounds exhibiting certain effects – either by screening existing compounds (provided by the client) to determine the best enzyme for production or by developing an enzyme that could potentially improve the yield of an existing reaction
• Develop biomanufacturing approach for high-value targets – by utilizing microfluidics technology to screen for enzymes that could potentially manufacture the compound of interest. Mass scaling of the enzyme and target product is possible after enzyme optimization
• Caters to various uses in different industries such as food, flavors & fragrance, beauty & cosmetics

The technology consists of intelligent hardware and software algorithms that enable fast enzyme engineering and sustainable development pathways of ingredients for a wide range of industries including food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics as compared to existing robotics technology out in the market.

• Cost efficient development with shorter time to market - by increasing the speed of development and the probability of success, the development of innovative products is accelerated.
• Sustainable model – various flexible pricing and IP licensing model for formulation development