Towards the on-demand and automated synthesis of complex amino acids

The global amino acids market is growing rapidly, with applications in a wide range of areas, including: active pharmaceutical ingredients, peptide drug manufacture, higher performance catalysts and specialty chemicals, speciality and medical nutrition, and cosmetics/personal care. The global therapeutics peptide market alone was estimated to be worth USD 40 billion in 2024 and is anticipated to grow consistently at 10% per annum from 2025-2030. Current synthetic production methods are suited to the preparation of relatively simple natural and unnatural amino acids. We have developed chemistry that allows the rapid and efficient production of complex amino acids that cannot be prepared easily or at all by other methods. Our synthetic technology potentially addresses two key market challenges: availability and cost. In the PoC funding period, we will:i)Build on the synthetic methodology by demonstrating production on commercially relevant scale to derisk any scale-up challenges (e.g. purification, yield)ii)Transfer the chemistry to semi-autonomous synthesis platforms to move towards our long term vision of the autonomous and on-demand synthesis of complex amino acids. The combination of production technology and our synthesis IP will allow the low cost production of complex amino acids. Potential user benefits include: (a) access to new markets previously inaccessible due to cost, (b) access to new unnatural amino acids, enabling enhanced catalytic performance and selectivity, (c) decentralised automated production, (d) access to new active pharmaceutical ingredients, nutraceuticals and peptides.