Arzeda, The Protein Design Company™, has been awarded a significant grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the NSF's Use Inspired Acceleration of Protein Design (NSF USPRD) initiative. This award, amounting to nearly $6.3 million, will leverage Arzeda's Intelligent Protein Design Technology™ to enhance industrial-scale cell-free biomanufacturing across various sectors.

"Cell-free manufacturing has long promised faster, cleaner production, but until now it has been constrained by the capabilities of natural enzymes," stated Alexandre Zanghellini, Ph.D., cofounder and CEO of Arzeda. He emphasized the transformative potential of the project, saying, "By combining our generative AI enzyme design platform with these new NSF resources, we will remove those constraints. This will unlock scalable, cost-effective enzyme cascades that were previously impossible and open markets an order of magnitude larger than today."

Arzeda aims to revolutionize cell-free manufacturing by designing high-performance enzymes that utilize cost-effective, highly stable non-natural cofactors. This innovation will facilitate reactions that were previously uneconomic in cell-free systems, thus broadening the scope of products that can be produced cell-free, including bio-based materials and specialty chemicals. The company’s existing success with ViaLeaf™ Reb M natural sweetener, which demonstrates cell-free biomanufacturing at a commercial scale of 500 MT/yr, lays a strong foundation for this new initiative.

In leading this project, Arzeda will collaborate with a consortium of prestigious academic institutions, including Stanford, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of California, Irvine, and University of California, Davis. This multidisciplinary team will combine AI-driven protein design, high-throughput testing, and advanced bioprocess engineering to advance cell-free technology for widespread industrial use.

The research detailed in this announcement is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under NSF USPRD award #2449206. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. For further information, visit the NSF award announcement at https://www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-invests-nearly-32m-accelerate-novel-ai-driven-approaches.