Officials at eXoZymes, which focuses on cell-free manufacturing and the development of AI-enhanced “exozymes,” say that an independent partner, Cayman Chemicals, ran eXoZymes’ technology at pilot scale and achieved results consistent with, and in some cases exceeding, earlier internal runs.
Cayman Chemical advanced the protocol from a 1-L setup to a 100-L pilot run, operating the reaction, downstream processing, and analysis independently. During the run, the team reported real-world conditions, including pH variation and precipitation, which often cause enzyme-based processes to fail.
Despite this, the reaction continued to perform reliably and delivered strong results, ultimately producing more than 500 g of pharma-grade N-trans-caffeoyltyramine (NCT) at 99.6% purity, according to an eXoZymes spokesperson, who added that a result like this is difficult to obtain in biomanufacturing without extensive purification steps.
“I’ve performed a lot of cell-based enzymatic biocatalysis over the years; it is a critical component of what we do at Cayman,” noted Patrick Westcott, director of catalog chemistry production at Cayman. “One common aspect of this work is a drop in efficacy during scale-up. Anytime you move up in scale orders of magnitude, a process changes enough that it is considered a different process altogether.
“During the experiment, from the first sample that we took, the analysis showed over a 99% conversion rate. There was some concern because I thought that maybe it was a little bit too high. So, we decided to take a second sample to see if it maintained a similar conversion rate. And we were a little surprised to find out that we actually did achieve this 99% conversion in our first 100-fold scale-up of their process. That was very much an aha moment for us!”
“This pilot run is an important validation of our cell-free platform, demonstrating that it performs reliably at scale and delivers strong results in the hands of an external partner. The fact that this project reached pilot scale in less than a year underscores our ability to move R&D at a disruptive pace, and just as importantly, it meaningfully reduces platform execution risk by showing that our technology can be transferred and operated successfully beyond our own labs,” stated Damien Perriman, CCO at eXoZymes.
“With more than 500 g of pharma-grade NCT now available from this run, we are actively engaging partners interested in evaluation, formulation development, and potential commercialization.”
