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.”

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A new technique combined with changes in material design is making reversible viscosity modulations possible, according to researchers from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

By connecting electrorheological properties to microscopic behaviors, biopharmaceutical manufacturers can simultaneously view real-time changes in emulsion microstructures and measure viscosity. Seeing droplet clustering, alignment, chaining, or breakup under electrorheological stress isn’t possible with traditional rheology. In practical terms, this still-experimental technique enables microfluidic droplets and droplet atomization, for example, to be controlled using electric fields.

Potential applications in biopharmaceutical manufacturing include mixing and blending, pumping and filtration, ultrafiltration, and filling. It may also improve injectable administration without harming stability.

Electrorheoimaging (ERI) builds on traditional rheology, which deals with the deformation and flow of liquids and other forms of matter. This new technique combines electrical forcing, rheological response, and imaging, co-authors Majid Bahraminasr, PhD, post-doctoral scholar, and Anand Yethiraj, PhD, professor, University of Guelph, explain in a recent paper.

In investigating the effects of direct currents on emulsions, Bahraminasr and Yethiraj found a “striking rheological response, previously unreported.” They noted “shear thinning and decreased intrinsic viscosity on one hand, and the emergence of field-induced bands in the spatial structure of the sheared emulsion, on the other.”

For alternating current, “Electrohydrodynamics is strongly frequency dependent,” they point out, adding that viscosity weakened as the electrical frequency increased.

When combined with a continuous phase that lowers electrohydrodynamic thresholds—an emulsion of castor oil dispersed in motor oil, in this research—the scientists were able to use an electric field to cause the emulsion to change viscosities instantly within a 30-fold range. Notably, viscosity could increase as well as decrease, and even “reduce viscosity below its quiescent, field-off state,” they report.

This suggests that this technique may be used to create a reversible viscosity switch that may be activated simply by tuning the frequency of the applied electrical field.

Unusual, but valuable

Although electrical field modulation is not a typical feature of biomanufacturing, it may help biopharmaceutical developers gain insights into energy dissipation, pattern formation, and nonequilibrium steady states in driven fluids.

For mAb manufacturing, therefore, applying ERI could help biopharmaceutical manufacturers:

• Optimize processes for scale-up
• Predict process behavior
• Link bulk viscosity increases to specific microstructural events
• Temporarily reduce viscosity during manufacturing
• Restore stability post-processing
• Inform excipient strategies

This work appears to be relevant to protein-based therapeutics, including mAbs, which often exhibit non-Newtonian rheology properties such as formation of submicrometer aggregates that complicate mixing, pumping, filtration, filling, and syringe usage, or that compromise product stability and ease of administration. “It also helps detect artifacts, such as bubbles, that could distort measurements,” the authors point out.

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Researchers say they have used a high-sensitivity mass spectrometry technique to improve the accuracy of sandwich ELISA. The team, from biopharmaceutical company Regeneron, hopes their work will help researchers better understand protein-protein interactions during preclinical development of a drug.

“Essentially, we used a mass spectrometry-based method, along with a computational method and interferometry, to identify a protein-protein binding site, geometry, and binding ratio within a short period of time,” explains Yue Su, PhD, a scientist at Regeneron.

Sandwich ELISA is a common technique in the biopharmaceutical industry, Su explains. To quantify antigens in complex samples, an antigen is “sandwiched” between capture and detection antibodies. But, to pair properly, the antibodies need to target different binding sites on the antigen. If the binding is not specific enough, there can be competition for binding sites or unwanted binding, she says.

To check the pharmacokinetics of the company’s antibody drugs, she explains, they use sandwich ELISA, but the team that developed the specific ELISA wanted to make more informed decisions to optimize their assay design, as well as enhance its specificity and sensitivity.

To assist in better defining binding sites, Su’s team decided to use hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS), a powerful technique for studying protein-protein interaction and dynamics.

“If you imagine an antibody, an area that is bound and [an area that is] non-bound are protected differently. Therefore, [they are] exposed to the surrounding buffer environment differently, and we were able to identify the difference between these areas to investigate the antibody-antibody binding itself,” she explains.

The team combined HDX-MS with computational methods, such as AI, to understand the protein-protein interactions involved when using the sandwich ELISA, she says.

Now they hope that other researchers will adopt HDX-MS to help investigate sandwich ELISA and better understand protein-protein interactions more generally.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time HDX-MS has been used to investigate the binding mechanisms in sandwich ELISA,” she says. “Hopefully, with new computational methods, such as AI, it can help facilitate our understanding of more protein-protein interactions.”

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