The image shows Dr Rob Rule, CEO and Co-founder of Entropix, and Professor David Hornby, Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and Co-founder of Entropix.
Entropix is an early-stage, Liverpool City Region-based, enzyme engineering company, specialising in the directed evolution of high-performance enzymes and biocatalysts. It is one of LYVA Labs’ portfolio companies and is a great example of innovation and entrepreneurship in the city region. LYVA Labs recently caught up with Entropix’s CEO, Rob Rule, to hear about the company's innovation journey and plans for the year ahead, and to ask him about his relationship with LYVA Labs and his thoughts about the wider LCR advanced manufacturing network.
Q.) What is the most innovative aspect of the novel enzyme and biocatalyst creation platform at Entropix, and how are you moving the dial in this area of research and development?
Enzymes are used in broad-ranging industries – from foods to pharmaceuticals, diagnostics to detergents. The supply of enzymes is a $10bn market, which is growing, as more products are made using biomanufacturing processes rather than traditional chemical methods. In some industrial applications, the enzymes need to be optimised, traditionally, and this has been a slow and painstaking process. It usually involves repeated cycles of modification and screening of numerous enzyme variants to improve the performance of the naturally occurring enzyme, so it meets the customers’ needs.
We are creating a platform to accelerate the development of enzymes using computational and experimental methods. Entropix’s techniques include unique methods for creating variants, purifying enzymes, screening them, and sequencing them.
Q.) Your technology platform uses ‘directed evolution to build on nature in the smartest possible way.’ What role do emerging technologies like AI and machine learning play in your R&D and how does the combination of molecular biology and emerging technologies enable you to meet customer and industry needs?
Each enzyme starts with a unique gene sequence that carries the code for that specific enzyme. When we create variants of an enzyme, we modify the gene sequence and then screen the resulting enzyme to see if there are any improvements in its performance. Owing to the complexity of any given enzyme gene sequence there are billions of potential variants. We are developing machine learning models that will identify patterns in gene sequences that give rise to high-performance enzymes in various applications. Eventually, we hope these models will have a predictive capability, giving us a short cut to designing high performance enzymes without creating and measuring all the billions of alternatives.
Q.) Tell us about any interesting businesses, industries, or partners you are working with or any important milestones your business recently reached
At Entropix, we recently completed an Innovate UK grant project to support the development of enzymes capable of degrading plastics, in particular, a common packaging plastic called PET. We have used our enzyme evolution technology to develop a version of a PET-degrading enzyme that withstands high temperatures, which speeds up the degradation process. These enzymes have potential applications in the recycling industry, including some laundry detergents. In addition, as part of our enzyme work, we have created an exciting new technology for purifying DNA (and other nucleic acids like RNA). This new approach works much more rapidly and cheaply than existing methods. We are about to launch this new technology into the biotech market for diagnostics, forensics, pharmaceuticals, and other applications.
Q.) How will investment from LYVA Labs help you move your products closer to market?
The investment we have received from LYVA Labs is quite modest compared with our longer-term requirements and the amount raised by comparable companies in other countries. However, we are quite close to commercialising certain products – particularly our DNA purification technology - so the investment enables us to complete some of our product trials, secure patent protection and find customers and development partners for this new technology in the coming months. In parallel, we are also developing our enzyme technologies across various sectors including diagnostics.
Q.) Do you have any upcoming follow-on funding, investment opportunities, or partnership work that you can tell us about?
This will depend on any progress we make in commercialising our new products. In some cases, we may be able to generate revenues rapidly, which will reduce the amount of follow-on funding required; in other cases, we may need to scale up the production of certain products, which would require additional working capital. We contacted several potential investors earlier this year regarding a multi-million-pound investment round, and we may revisit this plan next year depending on commercial progress.
Q.) As a young biotech company based in Runcorn, what challenges and opportunities have you encountered in the region, and how would you like to see entrepreneurs supported in the future?
I’d categorise the main challenges in creating and growing a biotech business in four specific areas:
Q.) What, in your view, is the most exciting development for advanced manufacturing and innovation in the region?
Industry is being transformed by digital technologies - the Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution. These technologies play an enormous role in future manufacturing strategies, including automation, AI, big data, robotics, and human-machine interfaces. It’s impossible to escape the impact of this digital revolution in advanced manufacturing, which offers the prospect for improved quality and more cost-effective manufacturing.
In addition to digital technology, the emergence of engineering biology could have a game-changing influence on society. Back in 2011, the famous Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen declared that ‘software will eat the world’ alluding to the potential global impact of IT as software companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, Uber, Airbnb and others began to dominate their markets. More recently, he has updated the quotation to say that ‘Biology is eating the world’ implying that modern biomolecular technologies (like mRNA vaccines) will create revolutionary products.
In our field of enzyme development, the recent commercialisation of cost-effective Next Generation DNA Sequencing technologies and high-throughput robotic screening have enabled small companies and laboratories to speed up the process of enzyme optimisation.
Q.) You spoke at LYVA Labs’ advanced materials event recently. How important do you think innovation networks like ours are for regional entrepreneurs? What was the most important or useful part of the event?
At their best, innovation networks act as fantastic, supportive ecosystems that bring together investors, entrepreneurs, start-ups, corporates, universities, and experts in innovation, IP, and finance. They help foster collaboration and learning amongst members and can improve the chance of success. The LYVA Labs event was useful for networking with other innovative young businesses and learning about new technologies and capabilities in the region.