Allozymes

Allozymes is a Singapore-headquartered biotechnology company that engineers custom enzymes for industrial biocatalysis. Its proprietary platform, branded ZymeLeap, combines ultra-high-throughput droplet microfluidics, bioinformatics/computational design and machine learning in a closed-loop design–build–test–learn workflow. Enzyme libraries containing millions of variants are compartmentalised into picolitre droplets generated at 5–6 kHz, each acting as a microreactor with integrated fluorescence detection and sorting; the company's website states screening of over 10 million variants per day, while 2024 press coverage cited up to 20 million variants per day.

The company's current public positioning centres on engineered-enzyme solutions for manufacturing complex oligonucleotide therapeutics, including siRNAs, antisense oligonucleotides and their bioconjugates, alongside other industrial biocatalysis applications. It offers a catalogue of enzymes for oligonucleotide manufacturing and biocatalysis, said to be available up to API commercial production, and long-term enzyme engineering service partnerships. Integrated operational capabilities include upstream process development with 1.5 L and 14 L fermenters and 150 L piloting, downstream unit operations (cell lysis, separation, chromatography, drying), and QA/QC with certificate-of-analysis documentation.

Earlier public descriptions from 2024 framed the business more broadly across food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, with published or reported application examples including bioreactor production of phytoene and bisabolol, soluble sweet fiber from plant fibres, precision fermentation titre improvement, unspecific peroxygenase specificity engineering, and an engineered enzyme for diagnostic/biosensing applications produced in Pichia pastoris.

Founding story

Co-founders Peyman Salehian and Akbar Vahidi met in 2013 while pursuing doctoral degrees in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore. The company's technology was seeded during Vahidi's postdoctoral research at NUS and was patented and commercialised with support from the NUS Industry Liaison Office. Salehian, who had previously founded a start-up, took the commercial role while Vahidi led technical development; they assembled a team spanning microfluidics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, software and biotechnology.

Business model

Allozymes sells enzyme engineering as a service and supplies engineered enzymes. Reported service tiers as of 2024 were SingZyme, an entry-level single-enzyme optimisation offering aimed at making an existing process faster or cheaper, and MultiZyme, a higher-level offering that discovers or refines multiple enzymes to meet a functional requirement. The website describes a growing catalogue of enzymes available up to API commercial production plus embedded, long-term co-development partnerships spanning route scouting to commercial scale-up. Data generated during customer projects remains Allozymes' intellectual property and is accumulated into an internal enzyme data library.

Service-based enzyme engineering and co-development engagements with industrial partners, plus supply of engineered enzymes from a catalogue; the company also reported receiving a million-dollar grant for a soluble sweet fiber project.

Traction

By May 2024 the company had grown to 32 people across the U.S., Europe and Singapore with roughly 15 times its original ~1,000 sq ft lab space. Named partners and customers include Adisseo, Bonumose and SPARC, each providing testimonials on the company's website. A diagnostics case study reports 150-fold activity improvement and 3-fold ki improvement for a partner enzyme expressed in Pichia pastoris within six months. Other documented applications include bioreactor production of phytoene using 99% less water, bio-identical bisabolol, and soluble sweet fiber, the last supported by a million-dollar grant.

Latest developments

The company's website presents the ZymeLeap platform with a stated focus on oligonucleotide therapeutic manufacturing, an enzyme catalogue available up to API commercial production, integrated process development to 150 L scale, and QA/QC with CoA documentation. Leadership listed includes CEO Peyman Salehian, CTO Akbar Vahidi, COO Andreas Reindl and Business Development Director Audrey Robic, with a board comprising Salehian, Vahidi, Henri Najade, Dickson Thian and Oxana Kukhaneva. Allozymes lists TIDES Europe in Amsterdam (3-5 November 2026) as an upcoming event.