THE MISSION
At Hephaistos we believe that chemical production often shares some fundamental flaws—chief among them being its high cost. This is largely due to the energy-intensive requirements for extreme temperature and pressure conditions, as well as the need for specialized equipment to handle such processes. Additionally, chemical synthesis typically involves multiple steps, generating toxic byproducts and requiring the use of organic solvents. These byproducts and solvents must be separated and disposed of, resulting in product loss and further increasing costs. If the compound has a certain property called chirality, which is often the case in pharmaceutical compounds, one wastes more then 50% of the possible yield. Nature, however, offers an elegant solution: enzymes. These highly optimized biocatalysts, refined through billions of years of evolution, perform complex organic synthesis effortlessly, even within our own bodies. They do so at normal pressures and temperatures, while producing minimal waste. Enzymes are just a linear string of 20 fundamental building blocks, called amino acids. However, as these enzymes stem from nature, they are only available for naturally occurring reactions. If we want to use their ability for newly developed synthetic compounds, we need newly developed synthetic enzymes. Here we step in and offer an AI based tool, that learns the mapping from the amino-acid code to the chemical function of the enzyme and can thus design enzymes that can catalyse chemical reactions not found in nature. With the help of enzymes multiple reaction steps can be summarized and subsequent cleanup can be simplified. Last but not least, enzymes naturally deliver chemicals with desired chirality without loosing any yield at all. In comparable transitions from traditional chemical synthesis to enzymes, this led to 10% yield increase, 50% daily productivity increase and almost 20% less waste. Our algorithm is trained on high quality enzyme structural data, that we have curated. The enzymes will allow unprecedented reactions to take place, making it a zero to one solution.
"Given the fact that the strength of our team lies on the technical side, we benefited a lot from the business and market expertise associated with the Talent Kick program. We were pushed to analyze our market in detail and evaluate how we want to enter it and what challenges to expect. Overall, it helped to make our case more solid."
THE TEAM
Lukas Merlicek (MS) - ML enzyme design | Lukas Radtke (MS) - ML enzyme design | Janik Neumann (MS) - Wetlab & Organizational | Moritz Ullhofen (MS) - Chemical Domain & Wetlab | Arthur Theuer (MS) - Data Science | Ilya Schneider (MS) - Market and Business Development, Organizational |
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SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
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GET INVOLVED
We are currently setting up the lab validation for our tech, so if there is anyone who could help us get consumables at a friendly price please contact us. Besides that, we always look for an input from people who see enzymes as a level up in their manufacturing and can give us their professional opinion on their implementation in a particular field. Finally, we are raising funding for incorporation and a one year budget. Any tips and opportunities that can help us advance in that direction are more than appreciated.
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