Full Press Release Details
selected as core industry partner in $9M NSF-funded initiative to advance modular cell-free biomanufacturing
CA - June 26, 2025 - Today, eXoZymes Inc. (NASDAQ: EXOZ) ("eXoZymes") - a pioneer of AI-engineered enzymes that
can transform sustainable feedstock into nutraceuticals, medicines, and other essential chemicals - announced its role in the Meta-PURE
initiative, a $9.2 million USD National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project under the CFIRE program aimed at transforming the
scalability and accessibility of cell-free systems to expand real-world applications.
by Georgia Tech with a coalition of top academic and industry groups, Meta-PURE will build a suite of standardized, interoperable
modules' for cell-free biomanufacturing, enabling plug-and-play modules that can rapidly shift between use cases - from
high-value nutraceuticals, to essential chemicals or pharmaceuticals. eXoZymes' contribution builds on its proven ability to design
complex enzyme cascades that operate outside of cells at unprecedented yields.
job in Meta-PURE is to build a cell-free power plant - an ATP-generating module that other teams can plug into to drive their own production
modules," said Dr. Paul Opgenorth, co-founder of eXoZymes and co-principal investigator on the award. Dr. Opgenorth continues,
"By decoupling the power module from the production module, we're enabling faster reaction times, greater product yields,
and making the development of production modules more accessible for our partners across a broad spectrum of synthetic biology applications."
Meta-PURE, eXoZymes - formerly known as Invizyne Technologies - will serve as the key industrial partner, with a $3 million share
of the total award, and will develop a cell free ATP-generating module - essentially a cell-free power plant - that fuels different chemical
production modules to be developed now and in the future, supporting cell-free manufacturing of several market-relevant targets.
addition, eXoZymes' role also includes developing a production module for santalene, an extremely high-value fragrance
compound, traditionally extracted from sandalwood for use in aromatherapy and traditional medicine formulations. Furthermore, derivates
of santalene have been investigated in pharmaceutical use cases.
coalition partners will develop targets spanning a wide range of complexity and markets, but all relying on eXoZymes' plug-and-play
cell-free power plant, which will be tested and optimized to both purified and lysate-based exozymes biosolutions to ensure compatibility
the Meta-PURE Initiative
is part of NSF Advancing Cell-Free Systems Toward Increased Range of Use-Inspired Applications (CFIRE) program and supported under Cooperative
Agreement No. 2452482. It is designed to lay foundational infrastructure for a flexible, cost-effective, and robust U.S. bioeconomy.
Work under this program will commence on July 1, 2025 and will run for three years.
opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.
in 2019, the company has developed a biomanufacturing platform that - as a historic first - offers the tools and insights to design,
engineer, control and optimize nature's own natural processes to produce chemical compounds, enabling the company's partners
to replace traditional petro-chemical production methods with a new commercially scalable, sustainable, and eco-friendly alternative:
are advanced enzymes enhanced through AI and bioengineering to thrive in a bioreactor outside of living cells. Exozymes can replace toxic
petrochemical processes and inefficient biochemical extraction with sustainable and scalable biosolutions that transform biomass into
essential chemicals, medicines, and biofuels.
freeing enzyme-driven chemical reactions from the limitations imposed by cells, exozyme biosolutions eliminate the scaling bottleneck
that has hampered commercial success in the synthetic biology (SynBio) space, making exozymes the next generation of biomanufacturing.
the company, eXoZymes Inc., has introduced "exozymes" as a scientific concept, they are not trademarking the concept, as
they view it as a new nomenclature for wide adoption for this next generation of biomanufacturing that eXoZymes aims to pioneer and be
the market leader of.
more on exozymes.com
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could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements
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future events, or otherwise. eXoZymes does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations.
G rlitz, VP of Communications