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 latest initiative – BioClick – a pioneering concept designed to enhance and accelerate the engineering of enzymes for advanced chemical reactions. Funded in part by a $300K grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), this project has the potential to revolutionize how medicines and other bio-based compounds are created.
At the heart of BioClick is a focus on group transfer reactions, a class of biochemical reactions that allow enzymes to precisely move small molecular chemical groups from one compound to another. Inspired by the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry concept of Click Chemistry, often described as snapping LEGO pieces together, BioClick is now enabling new types of group transfers using custom enzymes. Among these, prenylation is a standout: a process where a small fatty molecular group is taken from a donor molecule and added to another drug compound to improve its function or how well it works in the body. This technique is especially promising in the development of more effective, targeted drugs and therapies, either as new drugs or as better versions of existing drugs.
“Our new BioClick approach not only boosts efficiency but opens the door to the biomanufacturing of rare and previously unthinkable target molecules that can be game-changers in medicine, nutrition, and other functional nutraceuticals. By building a complete tool set—from enzyme engineering to pilot scale synthesis, we’re setting a new standard for what can be done with bio-based click chemistry.” Said Dr. John Billingsley, PI on the recently awarded BioClick grant from NIH’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. He adds, “If you consider directed evolution, which landed Dr. Francis H. Arnold the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2018 as the first generation, and rational protein design as the second generation, we’re now introducing the third generation of enzyme engineering: Artificial Evolution.”
Critically, the BioClick tools also introduce new high-throughput screening capabilities, allowing researchers to test thousands of enzyme variations simultaneously. With the help of advanced tools like mass spectrometry and cutting-edge data analysis algorithms, eXoZymes can quickly identify which enzyme version works best for a given group transfer reaction – greatly enhancing the molecular level operation by quickly identifying the best-performing variants. This Artificial Evolution process dramatically reduces the time and cost required to develop the exozyme pathway that will produce a new or better drug.
“With our new BioClick tool set that incorporates artificial intelligence into our exozymes platform, coupled with our advanced enzyme engineering skills and high-throughput screening – which exponentially increases the rate of data acquisition – we now support the automated design of novel small molecules, that will lead to better medicines,” states Dr. Tyler Korman, co-founder and VP of Research at eXoZymes. He continues, “In other words, we’re not just fine-tuning our pathways of enzymes and exozymes for drug development – we’re unlocking a large new white space of small molecules previously inaccessible. We believe this has the potential to introduce not just new drugs but a valuable opportunity of taking existing drugs and making better versions of them.”
Acknowledgement
Research reported in this press release was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number R43GM157956. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
