About us

Timeline

2008 – Prozomix was founded as an outside investor-free start-up, to grow organically in the early post-genomics era, discovering novel enzymes for biocatalysis and the biorefinery.

2009 – In February the first R&D and Production Laboratories became fully operational, and www.prozomix.com launched. Trading commenced!

2010 – Growing requests for ever larger numbers of novel biocatalysts necessitated ever faster and cheaper gene cloning methods to be employed, resulting in the invention of an ultra-efficient gene cloning technology termed GRASP™ (Genomics-based Related Activity Screening Protocol).

2011 – Armed with GRASP™, in conjunction with 384-format PCR, Prozomix experimented with optimal methods for building new panels of biocatalysis enzymes of interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Although initially indirectly by supplying companies that serviced that market, it soon became apparent by collaborating with such key customers that the identification and subsequent even-sampling of whole protein families (Pfams) harbouring historically published and / or patented biocatalysis enzymes, was going to be the key to success, and so that endeavour began.

2012 – In a watershed moment, Prozomix announced to its customers and competitors alike that it was using GRASP™ to build the most diverse collection of biocatalysts on the market, which would be offered to the pharmaceutical industry via a free-of-charge Biocatalysis Enzyme Toolkit concept. Only months later the first such panel was launched; a modest 51 member KRED kit, that was an immediate success, with early feedback suggesting a higher hit rate per enzyme screened than the gold-standard competitor kits available at the time!

2013 – The capabilities of the growing and ever evolving Toolkit were increasingly catching the attention of leading academic groups, with both numerous national and prestigious EU grants now been awarded to Prozomix. Novel activities of significant academic and industrial interest started to be discovered from the novel panels, such as a dual-specific NADH/NADPH oxidase. The KRED kit, launched the previous year and now over 100 enzymes strong, was produced in 96-well plate format, allowing customers to more easily screen the enzymes. This marked the first of many plates to be produced this way in years to come!

2014 – In order to simultaneously add novel/diverse enzymes to the growing Toolkit, at the same time as guaranteeing freedom to operate (FTO) with respect to the Nagoya Protocol (which was entering UK law in October of this year) Prozomix began experimenting with in-house metagenomics, and the first UK soil metagenome was performed.

2015 – The first metagenomic KREDs were added to the Toolkit. They were selected not only on phylogenetic basis, to be as diverse as possible from all KREDs present in the kit so far, but also as diverse to all protein sequences in the entire open database at the time (average % identity of each enzyme to closest homologue in open database was approx. 70 %, some as low as 30 %!!!). Customer feedback was again compelling, and Prozomix immediately invested all resources into generating more metagenomic data and mining more metagenomic genes! We were asked to join numerous additional collaborative EU grants where our Toolkit was desired for screening against many diverse applications, and most were funded.

2016 – With the knowledge that cutting-edge panels has been developed, and now being supplied in 384-well plate format, the Biocatalysis Enzyme Toolkit was offered for the first time to Big Pharma. As hoped, significant hits flowed in almost real-time. A key hit against a Hepatitis C API resulted in a request for a quantity of enzyme Prozomix could not, at the time, produce within the timeframe required by the Big Pharma customer. Under our terms and conditions, we attempted to move the manufacturing obligation onto our customer as per our agreement. Whilst that was, in theory, allowed, the customer pointed out that they did not have sufficient time to get a third-party CMO up to speed given the short amount of time they had before their process would be given over to traditional synthetic chemistry, and petitioned Prozomix to produce a 10 kg batch. While Prozomix successfully struggled producing that batch, and rescued that particular novel bioprocess, it was clear that our Biocatalysis Enzyme Toolkit concept would require an associated scale-up to a capacity of multi-kg, supplied within weeks, if it was going to be maximally successful.

2017 – Prozomix acquired and installed a Pilot Plant in a new premises, at a 750 L total volume, marking the start of the migration of the business to a new Manufacturing Site, soon to be purchased by the company.

2018 – Prozomix occupied more premises at the Manufacturing Site, and opening a dedicated small-scale manufacturing laboratory, to enable efficient production of Toolkit enzymes and batches up to 1 kg of crude enzyme powder. This facility was termed the “Flask Lab”. Prozomix also purchases a 8000 sqft factory building to house first Commercial Manufacturing campaign DSP. Through significant customer demand, Prozomix becomes both a small-scale, and bulk, CMO. A proof-of-concept sea water metagenome was performed, which would form the basis of how metagenomics would continue to move forward in the years to come.

2019 – With Prozomix now suppling 10/11 of the largest Big Pharma players, the decision was made to move R&D functions into the new factory, and also install a 6000 L working volume Production Plant. A suite of laboratories was built in new factory, and the original Prozomix R&D Site in Haltwhistle was closed-down. The metagenomic efforts continued with a milestone sampling event – compost samples from every city in the UK!

2020 – The Covid Pandemic resulted in much demand from customers for Prozomix to perform additional services. Much pandemic-related work was also performed in collaboration, and as sub-contract, with Manchester University through funding from the BMG Foundation/Medicines For All. The land located between the new factory and an adjacent, identical factory, was purchased by Prozomix.

2021 – Mid-pandemic, Prozomix attempted to circumnavigate the UK in February, braving winter storms and perilous conditions, to collect maximum diversity bacterial samples for the metagenomics effort. The mission failed after 17 days and some 1000 miles at sea – all without being able to get off the boat due to travel restrictions! It is from this data that Prozomix was able to sequence it’s one-trillionth base pair!

2022 – Results from the partial circumnavigation of the UK led to EU-funding via the BlueTools Horizon 2020 grant, allowing a second attempt and complete the dataset. A tree planting program and an executive EV scheme were introduced as part of a sustainability drive. Prozomix published two papers featuring enzymes it had discovered in the journal Nature.

2023 – Prozomix successfully circumnavigated the UK in February, taking just 9.5 days to cover the 1575 nautical miles. The non-stop trip was made in calm and sunny weather, while continuously collecting surface water samples, along with deep water samples at 100 ft every 8 hours (day and night). A 78 kWp plant was installed on the roof of the factory as Phase I of Prozomix’ Solar Strategy to repay total energy debt by 2030. Prozomix now supplies 17/20 of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

2024 – Ginkgo Bioworks announces a new Partnership with Prozomix to generate next generation AI-designed/mined enzymes, employing the decade of data generated by Prozomix and it’s customers/collaborators, in conjunction with sequence data for the thousands of novel recombinant enzymes from the Biocatalysis Enzyme Toolkit. Prozomix becomes a member of Ginkgo’s TechNet. A second, identical factory adjacent to existing factory building has been purchased by Prozomix, giving a total current factory production area of 20000 sqft, with more than an equivalent area of land for future developments.  All buildings on the Prozomix Manufacturing Site are now supplied with electricity from the Phase I Solar Plant, with Phase II to be implemented later in 2024…