Evonetix makes key appointments to support development of novel gene synthesis technology
CAMBRIDGE, UK, 18 September 2018 – EVONETIX LTD (‘Evonetix’), the company pioneering an innovative approach to scalable and high-fidelity gene synthesis, announced today that it has expanded its team three-fold, following a successful series A round of £9 million ($12.3M) to support the development of the Company’s technology.
The appointments include physicists, electrical, mechanical and software engineers, chemists and biologists, bringing the Company’s headcount currently to 34. Growth of Evonetix’s technical and scientific team is part of its strategy to revolutionise gene synthesis by developing a novel, silicon-based gene synthesis device that will deliver high-fidelity gene-length DNA at scale.
By directing the synthesis of DNA at many sites in parallel, followed by an integrated error-detection process throughout the assembly process, Evonetix’s platform facilitates the synthesis of high-fidelity, long DNA molecules at scale, including challenging sequences with high GC-content or repeats. The Company’s approach to gene synthesis has the potential to enable many applications in the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology, from the development of novel pharmaceuticals, to industrial biotech, renewable fuels, agriculture and potentially digital data storage.
Tim Brears, Evonetix CEO, said: “These appointments form part of our ambitious growth plans and mission to further advance our innovative and disruptive gene synthesis technology, to facilitate the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology, where scale and high fidelity will be essential. Following our recent fundraising, we’re investing in key technical and scientific roles as planned, and we are excited to welcome the new members of our multidisciplinary team.”
For further information about Evonetix’s team, please visit: www.evonetix.com/full-team
ENDS
Tim BrearsFor further information, please contact:
Evonetix Ltd
Tel: 01223 930307
E-mail: tim.brears@evonetix.com
Michelle Ricketts
Zyme Communications
Tel: 0778 9053885
E-mail: michelle.ricketts@
Notes to Editors
About Evonetix Ltd
Evonetix is revolutionising gene synthesis with the aim of producing DNA at scale to enable many applications in the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology, across a wide range of industries, from pharmaceuticals to industrial biotech, specialty chemicals, renewables, bioremediation, agriculture and potentially also digital data storage.
The Company’s platform is based upon a novel silicon array and unique synergistic thermal control chemistry, capable of synthesising oligonucleotides in parallel, at each of the 10,000 miniaturised reaction sites. The technology is compatible with both chemical and enzymatic gene synthesis and allows for exquisite control at each site of synthesis. It uses a process of error detection throughout assembly to yield high-fidelity long DNA molecules, including challenging sequences with high-GC content or repeats. Thus, Evonetix’s approach permits massive parallelism in de novo DNA synthesis and enables high-throughput on-chip assembly of high-fidelity gene-length DNA at scale.
Evonetix is based in Cambridge, UK and was founded in 2015 by Cambridge Consultants Ltd and Providence Investment Company Limited. The Company raised £9 million in a series A financing, co-led by DCVC and Draper Esprit, and has been awarded Innovate UK co-funding for a £1.3 million gene synthesis project.
For further information see www.evonetix.com
About synthetic biology
With the huge increase in DNA sequence information available to mankind over the past ten years, there now exists an unprecedented opportunity to, for example, engineer metabolic pathways and organisms, improve industrial processes, create new processes and engineer genomes with new or improved traits. This opportunity, known as synthetic biology, is estimated to grow rapidly over the coming years, reaching $40 billion in value in the mid-2020s. Synthetic biology will have a massive impact across many industries and will be fundamental to helping us manage the Earth’s resources.
However, only a highly disruptive technology is likely to achieve the significant improvements in DNA synthesis required to enable and facilitate these opportunities. Evonetix believes that, by providing high-fidelity DNA at scale, without the need for post-synthesis error correction, it will be well placed to capture a significant part of the growing multibillion-dollar synthetic biology opportunity.