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CloseEVONETIX: GENE SYNTHESIS ON A CHIP FOR LIFESAVING SOLUTIONS
What if we could rapidly develop new and affordable, individualized medications on the surface of a silicon chip to treat cancer, metabolic disorders, and infectious diseases?
Synthetic biology is not a far-off fantasy of science fiction but a new interdisciplinary technology to make biology easier to engineer. The technology is a convergence of advances in chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering for the design and fabrication of biological components, solutions, and systems that do not exist in the natural world. Synthetic biology is a biology-based toolkit that uses abstraction, standardization, and automated construction to change how we build biological systems and expand the range of possible products.1
Synthetic DNA technology, a subset of synthetic biology, provides the critical starting point for personalized medicine, putting precision cell therapies, tumor-specific cancer vaccines, and nucleic acid-based vaccines in the hands of medical professionals to tailor specific therapies to the individual patient and their needs.
Evonetix is reimagining biology and developing a radically different third-generation approach to synthesizing gene-length DNA at unprecedented accuracy and scale. The biotech startup aims to advance global population health by facilitating the fast-growing field of synthetic biology and improving the quality, speed, and cost of developing synthetic biological solutions such as lifesaving vaccines, medicines, treatments, and therapies.
To fast-track development and bring its advanced platform to market, Evonetix needed a company with deep domain knowledge, as well as biosensor solution, MEMS processing, and semiconductor microfabrication expertise. Evonetix selected Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) with its innovation center, the Analog Garage and Digital Healthcare Business Unit to help make its vision a reality and advance the possibility of placing DNA synthesis in the hands of every researcher across the globe.
On December 4, 2023, after a long-standing collaboration, Evonetix and ADI announced the signing of a joint development agreement and commercial supply agreement to develop a completely new approach that will release the potential of novel biologic therapies and drive advances in engineering biology faster and further.
Here’s the story of how Evonetix and ADI collaborated to solve enormous technical challenges to help meet the global demand for better gene synthesis.
AT A GLANCE
COMPANY
Evonetix is a Cambridge, U.K.-based pioneer of groundbreaking synthetic biology technology developing a desktop platform for scalable, high fidelity, and rapid gene synthesis.
APPLICATIONS
Discovery and development of novel lifesaving therapies such as monoclonal antibodies and mRNA vaccines, and research into the mechanism of action of disease to establish a new generation of precision targeted medicine and diagnostics.
CHALLENGES
Empower scientists to harness the full potential of engineering biology through the fast-track development, scale-up, and commercialization of an affordable, plug and play desktop DNA writer platform.
GOAL
Place DNA synthesis in the hands of every researcher and change how DNA is accessed, made, and used. Enable scientists to rapidly synthesize high quality, gene-length DNA and advance global population health.
CONVENTIONAL DNA SYNTHESIS
For over 30 years, DNA has been synthesized by constructing individual strands and then combining them to create longer double-stranded DNA. Current techniques can be slow and expensive. They use large-scale industrial-sized equipment that often leads to random errors, requiring further time-consuming analysis and sequencing to ensure acceptable quality. As a result, the process can cause a huge bottleneck for innovation and inhibit the rapid development of new drug treatments and the advancement of healthcare.
Evonetix is reimagining gene-length DNA synthesis via its next-generation technology for the fast-growing field of synthetic biology. With ADI, Evonetix is developing a gene foundry on a chip. Evonetix envisages preparing gene-length DNA in three days at the benchtop, accelerating the design-build-test cycle for antibodies, vaccines, and proteins from months to days, and potentially delivering as much as a 10-fold productivity increase in gene delivery.
EVONETIX BIOSYNTHESIS
Evonetix is developing a platform that integrates physics with biology, regulating the synthesis of DNA at many thousands of independently controlled miniaturized reaction sites on the surface of a silicon chip.
Following synthesis, a breakthrough process will identify and remove errors, potentially providing accuracy several orders of magnitude better than conventional methods.
COLLABORATING TO ACHIEVE AGGRESSIVE GOALS
ADI’s biosensor solution expertise, advanced MEMS processing, and unique semiconductor microfabrication capability are three critical components required by Evonetix to achieve its vision for rapid biosynthesis. The three technologies help to enable drug discovery at an accelerated pace.
“The collaboration with Evonetix provides ADI an opportunity to enter the growing synthetic biology market,” said Patrick O’Doherty, SVP of Digital Healthcare, ADI.
“Our work together is aimed at increasing the speed and reducing the cost of gene assembly to provide novel strategies that can be used to produce affordable medications and treat a wide range of diseases globally with greater precision.”Patrick O’Doherty
Senior Vice President of Digital Healthcare | Analog Devices
ADI: SINGLE TEAM WITH MULTIDOMAIN PERSPECTIVE
“In our work with Evonetix, teams composed of engineers, data scientists, and hardware and software experts from leading research universities and tech startups helped to establish and mature technology for new solutions and breakthrough technologies,” said Patrick O’Doherty. “ADI is a company with a rich history of creating thousands of high quality products. We can take breakthrough programs and scale with product design and engineering teams from our Digital Healthcare Business Unit that have both the deep experience and rigor needed to bring the journey from high quality solution into scaled-production for our end customers.”
Evonetix is working with ADI to develop and supply an integrated product with MEMS and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that can miniaturize a solution for the control electronics and flow cell. Evonetix is progressing with ADI’s platform sensor structures, building the interface and control of the biological processes on silicon devices to establish DNA processing in miniaturized form. Product development continues, with an agreement reached for ADI to manage the commercial scale-up and production manufacturing for the desktop DNA writer.
“The support and expertise of the Analog Devices team has been invaluable in helping us to design a fully integrated, complex control ASIC with bespoke silicon processing, and we look forward to achieving commercial scale-up of our platform.”Dr. Matthew Hayes
Chief Technology Officer, Evonetix
Evonetix Plug and Play Desktop Device
Evonetix has shipped early samples of its semiconductor synthesized DNA to laboratory users and is deep in product development mode for its new system.
“Working with ADI has been a significant step forward in our mission to develop a highly parallel desktop platform to accurately synthesize DNA at scale.”Dr. Matthew Hayes
Chief Technology Officer, Evonetix
EVONETIX AND ANALOG DEVICES: LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
The Evonetix and ADI joint development agreement and commercial supply agreement cement the continuation of the long-standing combined work of both companies and the development of an ASIC designed to thermally control DNA synthesis and assembly to the next level by providing a turn-key semiconductor solution for Evonetix’s Evaleo® series of DNA synthesis devices.
Matthew Hayes, Founder and CTO at Evonetix, said, “This agreement with ADI, a global semiconductor leader, represents a major milestone for Evonetix and is a strong validation of our vision and our technology. This provides us with the capacity and manufacturing capabilities required as we continue our efforts to bring our technology closer to market, putting the power of gene synthesis directly in the hands of researchers.”
The Far and Wide Human Impact
DNA synthesis offers the potential for novel strategies for producing affordable medications and treating disorders and diseases. The opportunities available to synthetic biology are as diverse as pharmaceuticals and drug discovery.
Rapid and accurate gene synthesis accelerates scientists’ ability to use biology on a scale not possible through other means. The technology derived from the collaboration between Evonetix and ADI offers pathways to address humanity’s biggest challenges and create opportunities for a better, safer, healthier planet and population.
Sources
1“What is Synthetic/Engineering Biology?”. Engineering Biology Research Consortium.
