The Dare to Commercialize: Damien Perriman’s eXoZymes Playbook podcast episode is also available on Spotify and Apple.
Los Angeles, CA -- April 10, 2026 -- Today, eXoZymes Inc. (NASDAQ: EXOZ) (“eXoZymes”) - a pioneer of AI-enhanced enzymes that transforms abundant feedstock into valuable nutraceuticals and novel medicines - announced that Chief Commercial Officer, Damien Perriman was featured on the latest episode of the industry leading Grow Everything podcast to discuss the company’s first spinout, NCTx, and how eXoZymes is building a repeatable commercialization model for high-value natural products.
The Grow Everything podcast is co-hosted by biotech experts, Erum Azeez Khan and Karl Schmieder. Previous episodes have featured guests - including key individuals from companies like NVIDIA, P&G, Robertet, and eXoZymes CEO, Michael Heltzen, discussing the impact of biomanufacturing on all industries.
In the episode, Perriman outlined why eXoZymes launched NCTx as a dedicated vehicle for NCT, while keeping eXoZymes focused on what it believes it does best: Developing better ways to manufacture difficult-to-access molecules with meaningful commercial potential.
“eXoZymes is building a disciplined model for bridging invention and market delivery. We remain focused on creating better ways to make important molecules, while vehicles like NCTx are designed to take those opportunities into the market with speed and purpose. When our process performs successfully in someone else’s hands at scale, it reinforces that cell-free biomanufacturing can be a practical commercial platform.” states CCO of eXoZymes, Damien Perriman.
CEO of MessagingLab, Karl Schmieder, adds, "The scale-up problem in industrial biology isn't an engineering problem. Often, it's a biology problem. Cells are unpredictable by nature but eXoZymes eliminates that variable. When your chemistry runs outside the cell, you can engineer it like a real industrial process."
During the interview, Perriman said NCT emerged as a strong candidate for eXoZymes’ first spinout because it combined a naturally occurring molecule, encouraging preclinical interest, and a long-standing manufacturing challenge that had limited broader commercial development. He also discussed why the company is initially pursuing the supplement pathway for NCT, while continuing to evaluate longer-term pharmaceutical opportunities in parallel.
The conversation also highlighted eXoZymes’ recent third-party validation work with Cayman Chemical, where the company’s NCT production process was independently transferred and scaled 100-fold, achieving approximately 99% conversion and 99.6% purity. Perriman described that milestone as an important proof point for the company’s cell-free platform and its ability to support tech transfer and external manufacturing execution.
The full episode of Grow Everything is available through major podcast platforms, including YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
About eXoZymes
Founded in 2019, the company has developed a biomanufacturing platform that - as a historic first - offers the tools and insights to design, engineer, control and optimize nature’s own natural processes to produce highly valuable natural products, via a commercially scalable, sustainable, and abundant alternative: exozymes.
Exozymes are advanced enzymes enhanced through bioengineering and AI to thrive in a bioreactor without using living cells. Exozymes can replace toxic petrochemical processes and inefficient biochemical extraction with sustainable and scalable biosolutions that transform abundant feedstock into valuable nutraceuticals and novel medicines.
By freeing enzyme-driven chemical reactions from the limitations imposed by cells, exozyme biosolutions eliminate the scaling bottleneck that has hampered commercial success in the synthetic biology (SynBio) space, making exozymes the next generation of biomanufacturing.
While the company, eXoZymes Inc., has introduced “exozymes” as a scientific concept, they are not trademarking the concept, as they view it as a new nomenclature for wide adoption for this next generation of biomanufacturing that eXoZymes aims to pioneer and be the market leader of.
Learn more at exozymes.com
eXoZymes Safe Harbor
This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions and describe the company’s future plans, strategies and expectations, can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terms such as “believe,” “expect,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “seek,” “intend,” “plan,” “goal,” “project,” “estimate,” “anticipate,” “strategy,” “future,” “likely,” “potential,” or other comparable terms, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release regarding the company’s strategies, prospects, financial condition, operations, costs, plans and objectives are forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially for a variety of reasons. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described in the “Risk Factors” section of eXoZymes’ quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, annual reports on Form 10-K, and other documents filed by eXoZymes from time to time by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings identify and address important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and eXoZymes assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. eXoZymes does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations.
Transcript
Hi there, and welcome to the Grow Everything podcast, where we talk about how biotech is transforming every industry. I'm Erum Aziz Khan. And I'm Karl Schmieder. I'm happy to be here today to talk about the production of nutraceuticals, the world of nutraceuticals.
And the person who we have as our guest today is perfectly equipped to talk about that. And that's Damien Perriman, the Chief Commercial Officer of eXoZymes. Damien, great to have you on the podcast. G'day, Karl.
G'day, Erum. Lovely to be here. Yeah, it's awesome. So Damien, you are at Dow Chemical. You are at Geno, formerly known as Genomatica. I'd like to say Genomatica. And you also advise a variety of startups like Cellugy, Provectus Algae, and Persephone Biosciences, who we had on the pod.
Stephanie Collor was on the pod. We had a great conversation with her. We recommend our audience listen to that episode. And so you have a lot of experience that we can all learn from. So very excited to have you be here.
And I remember when we first met, we were having tacos out of a taco truck in a parking lot after a Symbio Beta event. And it was so much fun to meet you. Carl, do you remember when you first met Damien? I think we had met on the floor at Symbio Beta, but then I remember we ended up at like this open outdoor beer, you know, live band thing.
And we hung out there for several hours eating pizza, not tacos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was at the end of a Symbio conference. So I think everyone was sort of coming down, processing, diffusing. And how nice was it? Just have some live music and some beers and some just general chat.
Because I think the network and sort of empowering the network, connecting with your network is how so much of this gets done. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you serve as chief commercial officer of Exozymes.
And now you're the driving force of this new spinoff, NCTX. And this is Exozymes' first spin out. It's the first time they've ever spun out a company. We previously had Michael Heldson, the CEO of Exozymes, come on the podcast.
And he talked about the power of cell-free manufacturing. That's a very powerful tool. Now you're taking it to produce a very specific molecule. What was it that led you guys to choose to spin out NTCX as its own entity versus keeping it as part of Exozymes? I think it's the discipline of knowing what you're good at.
But then there's also the need to actually drive things into the market with great prejudice. And so Exozymes, we want to stay really focused and become really, really good at spinning out better ways of making natural products with real performance advantages.
But that means we need to go back to the well and keep doing that and become really, really proficient at creating what Exozymes is there to create. Now, the discipline of driving something into the market is a different discipline.
You know, the first half is inventive. It's creative. It's disruptive. The second half needs to have systems that work with acceleration. And so the cultures are different. So we thought from a business model perspective, why not focus on what Exozymes does best, but then create an ecosystem and create a different vehicle with a different culture, with different teams, with different partnerships that then will take on that role of driving into the market.
Wow. Well said. We had to make that into a clip. That was very good. That was very good. So this week, you're here in New York City releasing a significant milestone. The company came in chemical, independently ran your process a hundred times scale, and they hit 99% conversion and 99.6% purity at the first attempt.
That's pharma-grade purity we're talking about. And their head of catalog chemistry said he was genuinely surprised. What does that moment matter so much to you? Why does it matter so much to you? I mean, it gives me chills, to be honest, when I think about the investment you put into an idea.
And I get to give a nod to the team, particularly the development team back in Monrovia at Exozymes, who poured their heart and soul in the last 12 months in sort of generating this process. Because when you get to manifest it in a scale-up project, their work now becomes a success milestone.
And so I don't want to take that moment away from them because they absolutely deserve it. But as a business, when you get to see your idea, your method operate in somebody else's hands, that's sort of the student now becomes the master, right? If you can teach someone to do what you do, then you've developed and you've demonstrated a sense of mastery.
So there's that element to it as well. But seeing them run it so easily out the gate, that just speaks to like cell-free is kind of a different type of technology to scale-up. You know, it's a simple reaction compared to a fermentation process or maybe some other types of chemical synthesis routes you have for making products.
That simplicity was then demonstrated when we had such an ease of the scale-up journey. Yeah, I would recommend that anybody who's listening should go on the Exozyme site and watch the video because it's pretty impressive.
And it kind of speaks to this idea that being able to transfer a technology from a biotech company to a CDMO or another manufacturer is really the name of the game when it comes to scale-up. And basically what it says for Exozymes is you're able to take your recipe and hand it off to someone else.
Give us some more details on what that Cayman validation means for Exozymes. Yeah, you stepped into the, I think, the importance of what that demonstrated a little bit when we were talking about the role of Exozymes versus the commercial spin-out.
We have a very clear picture on what we do. We developed tech transfer packages with qualified contract manufacturers and qualified supply chain so that our partners can take our technology and operate.
I focus on the operation, the production, the marketing, and all that brilliant, beautiful stuff that's responsible for putting product into people's hands. When we went to Cayman, we demonstrated we could deliver a product, right? So we moved out of this, we're a research organization, we're a development organization, now we're a product delivery organization.
And so I think that was the first test of being able to do that, do it well, and that sets us up to say, okay, let's do it again. Can I just ask a quick follow-up? Of course. Does that mean that Cayman will be the manufacturer for NCT or was that just a pilot with them? Are they going to be the partners? How's that going to work out? Cayman has certain assets, certain capabilities, which were sufficient for that scale-up step that we did.
Cayman operates across a broad set of industries. So I couldn't be more impressed with how professional they are, how open they've been as a partner. We have other ideas of things we want to do with Cayman, which I'm not going to touch on.
But, you know, once you find a good partnership, you work with it. And that's exactly what we're doing with Cayman. They turned out to be a great partner. Yeah, yeah. They, again, very surprised by the outcomes.
And I bet they're like, whoa, we need to work with exozymes because in that video, which we will have in the show notes, they were like, oh, there's so much we can do. And I saw like the kind of the shock and awe in the chemist's eyes.
It's like, I can't believe we're capable of doing this. And, Aram, I was surprised too. I've supervised. I've sponsored scale-up programs before. I remember dropping into a site in Germany where we were doing a scale-up project expecting to see fermenters running and product moving into DSP.
And my engineers were sitting outside the hotel having a beer in the middle of the day. And I'm like, what's going on? We're still waiting for the seed to grow. So you can hit unexpected results when you go from lab scale to larger scale.
And you always sweat it. I've had another one where, you know, the material came out and smelled different or the color was different. It's like, what is going on? In these complex living systems, it can throw unknowns at you when you go to larger scale.
And I think that's one of the things we really appreciate working in a cell-free system, which we should understand more of. But in a cell-free system, you're making one thing, right? So there is a lot less to go wrong when you're going into larger scale.
Yeah, a lot less drama because you don't have organisms trying to fight it out or stink up your ferment. And a lot less chemical engineers sitting outside their hotel in the sun just like waiting for the world to get back.
Just drinking beer, hanging out. Wow. What it's like to work in Germany. Very interesting. Okay. So let's talk about NCTX more. It's going to market first as a supplement before any pharmaceutical path.
So walk us through that logic. What's the advantage of leading with a supplement? Yeah. I think supplements and pharmaceuticals fundamentally serve different roles in our pursuit for human health span.
Yeah. Supplements is a way of actually being able to address humans' needs for better health and better lifestyles early on in the journey towards health span. Whereas pharmaceuticals is really about correcting what's gone wrong.
Yeah. And so when we think about supplements, we need to demonstrate that NCT is a material that is safe for humans to consume. And we need to demonstrate that NCT works as intended in humans. In the supplements game, you know, the pathway to grass for NCT has already been established.
And so that's a market that's pretty close to hand for us. And so it makes sense as a business to target that category that you can generate a return from faster because we have to serve our investors.
On the pharmaceutical side, that's much more targeted towards disease and to treatment. So that's a longer journey to demonstrate a product or maybe some variation of our product to serve that market.
So we are pursuing it, but that'll be a parallel longer term journey than the supplement space. But I think it's right, you know, we want to help humans on their journey towards healthy long lives. That's the role of a supplement.
But also there is this opportunity to help people who have already got into trouble and they're suffering from chronic disease. Why wouldn't we look at treatments through the pharmaceutical path as well? Yeah, I'm excited to talk more about that.
So let's talk about the supplement industry. Okay, it's very crowded. And consumers have been burned before by products that over-promise and under-deliver. How does NCT establish credibility in that space? Actually, let me rephrase that.
How does NCTX establish credibility in that space, especially when you're coming from a biotech rather than a consumer brand background? Yeah, I think a part of establishing credibility is first and foremost in what is the product that we're making? What is the rigorous toxicity, mutagenicity and other safety studies that we do to ensure that we can say this will be safe as intended for its use? That's super important.
And when you make an investment of the scale that we're making, you can't shortcut stuff like that, right? Because we don't want this to be a 12-month success and wait for the FDA to catch up with us, right? This is something we want to go global.
We want it to be massive. So you've got to get those things right. For us, the safety is important, but also the consistency of product is super important. So when we proudly talk about the purity of our product, there's a reason.
It's because if we can make it pure and we can industrialize a process that's very, very pure, it means our formulators are getting the exact same composition every single time. And then they can deliver products to customers that perform exactly the same way every single time.
So that trust is really important in building credibility in the supplements market. And then the commercial vehicle, you know, that separation of here's exozymes, but here's a commercial vehicle. The partners we are putting around these commercial vehicles are partners who will have established relationships and established customer reach.
We want to be able to leverage that because you need to have a conversation with consumers in the supplement space. What are their needs and how does this address your needs? And let's also not forget AI is going to be playing a role in how consumers educate themselves and take agency in what they consume.
So, you know, it's about understanding how that system and that network works. That's not an exozymes knowledge base. So the partners will become really important in that credibility. Yeah, let's talk about the actual molecule itself, NCT.
So the way I understand it, this is it impacts a very specific metabolic pathway, turns a switch on that improves how cells burn fat and produce energy. So scientists apparently have known about this switch for a really long time, but no one's figured out how to turn it on or turn it off.
What does it mean to be able to do that in really plain terms that someone who really doesn't understand the science, you know, could understand? And why is NCT the first molecule that can do that now? Yeah, so there's two important names to be aware of here.
There is HNF4 alpha, which is that metabolic switch that you talked about. We've known about the importance and the role of HNF4 alpha for a really, really long time. You know, it's a switch that turns on metabolism.
It's a switch which upregulates a number of other genes throughout the body that upload programs to control mitochondrial growth and mitochondrial formation. HNF4 alpha, though, has been notoriously difficult to drug, right? It's been attempted numerous times by the pharmaceutical industry, but these programs have failed because there was never an agonist, a molecule or drug that was able to go in there and switch on HNF4 alpha.
Until they discovered this compound called NCT, N-transcafyl tyramine in peppercorns and hemp seed husks. And it had a molecular structure which looked interesting for its ability to agonize HNF4 alpha.
And sure enough, nature did hold the breakthrough that we were looking for. And it was discovered that NCT is now the only known agonist of HNF4 alpha. But HNF4 alpha remains without a drug in the clinic.
There's no approved drug for treatment or sorry for activation of HNF4 alpha, even though it plays such a critical role in mitochondrial function, which is sort of key to healthy and functional metabolism.
Not yet. Yeah, not yet. Not yet. I like that growth mindset. And that's kind of why we got excited about this is you've got a compound that's got a known performance effect. You know, well-studied Sanford Burmese Prebys published a number of great clinical papers on its ability to activate HNF4 alpha.
But yet why has the industry lagged in turning this into a clinical candidate or turn this into a, you know, ingredient of choice for the industry? And the heart of that problem lies in it's only available in vanishingly small amounts of nature.
So it doesn't present itself as a compound to be farmed or a compound to be sourced. You have to produce it. But it was difficult to produce. Until now. Until now. Until now. Until now. That's amazing.
And I mean, it just, one of the things we talk about a lot on the podcast is how nature has the answers. And now we're able to really tap into those answers. Now, in preparing for the podcast, we looked at some of the preclinical data.
And what we saw is that, you know, it works. I mean, there's less weight gain in mice that are put on high-fat diets. Mitochondrial activity is up, like you said. Liver fat is down. But that's mice. What's the path to get that kind of data in humans? And what are the next steps for NCT? Yeah, now that we've got a developed method for production of NCT, we can reasonably step into a lot more human use studies for this compound.
So that's sort of taking the preclinical animal model work that's been done. There's been two human studies that have been enrolled around different indications. So that's also useful to show its effect in humans.
And NCT has been available in the supplements industry, although in trace dosing. So, I mean, there's precedents we're following in. But none of that source and none of that work below has really relied upon a consistent, high, pure, abundant source of NCT, which we now have.
So that means we get to really amplify the human use, right? And the human use is important for two reasons. One is we obviously want to build a pathway towards pharmaceutical, yeah? But also we just want to understand how humans react under different conditions, under different dose regimens, under different sort of methods of taking.
So that we can start to decipher what is the role it will play in our strategy as humans to live longer lives and longer quality lives. How does it play alongside GLP-1s? There's a lot of fascinating questions around the treatment of sort of chronic illness and the support of treatments for chronic illness that I think we need to understand next.
And that's the sort of exciting frontier for us now that we have an abundant, high-quality supply. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned GLP-1s. So you're positioning NCT as different from GLP-1s. It's considered metabolic restoration rather than appetite suppression.
Is that a genuine scientific distinction? And how do you see NCT fitting into the broader metabolic health conversation happening right now? Yeah. And I think it's important to sort of come out and be very transparent with our listeners.
None of our statements have been reviewed by the FDA yet. So we are really leading forward with just what scientific evidence we have. We're trying to be very honest about what we don't have yet. But GLP-1s have been sort of a fascinating restoration for chronic health to the medical community in that it suppresses appetite and has allowed medical practitioners to help obese people lose weight and move into a healthier condition.
Yeah. But that's a rescue. That's a correction. What we see in the NCT animal studies has been the treatment of healthy mice in the presence of a high-fat diet. And they gain less weight. And their livers stay healthier than if they did not take NCT in that situation.
So on the basis of that evidence, which is all we really got to work with right now, we've been thinking about NCT as more of an earlier treatment or a supplement that could provide earlier support to people who are early in their health span journey.
So as to help those people who work hard, who eat convenient foods, who have really hectic and stressful lifestyles move away from dysfunction and still have healthy metabolism, even though you're suffering some of these lifestyle issues that sometimes are frankly unavoidable.
We think of that as a real community to engage with and learn more about how NCT can help that community. But also if you are suffering with chronic illness and you have been rescued by GLP-1s, there's this bounce back issue when you stop taking GLP-1s.
So then how do you help those people who have perhaps got back to a weight that's good and healthy for them, not return to where they were before? You know, we can't just continue dosing GLP-1s. We need to find other ways of supporting those people.
I think as we do more study, we'll understand if NCT can play a role in that situation as well. Wow. So there's kind of an ongoing debate about what is natural. I always say, you know, natural because people have different definitions of what natural is.
And so when customers find out that this was a trace compound found in peppercorns that you've been able to scale via industrial biotech, how does that change the dialogue? What do you think people are going to ask and how are you going to address that story? Yeah.
I mean, we could have an entirely separate podcast just on the subject of natural. In my career, I've moved through fuels and plastics and textiles and personal care ingredients, fragrances, nutrition, now nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals.
And natural has a different definition everywhere you play. And when you bring in biology, natural has sort of an interesting definition in that regard as well. You know, using biological processes versus sourcing biological materials.
But let's be honest, when we talk about health span, what matters is safety and performance. Yeah. Whether it was sourced from a natural ingredient or whether it was produced using a natural-based process, whether biology was involved in the inspiration of this method at all, are secondary features to whether it works and, you know, whether it is safe.
So those are the two things that are most important to our audience. We like to add in, can we then produce it sustainably, right? And sustainability is probably the next definition that has the most varying number of definitions depending on who you're going to.
Yeah. But for us, the importance is like, can we make this ingredient without the destruction of ecosystems and natural habitats? Can we make this reproducibly at high quality? And can we do it as a company that is economical, right? So that we're not actually doing harm to the environment, we're not doing harm to our supply chains, and we're not doing harm to ourselves in trying to produce this and do so for a long time.
Yeah. This is why I love biotech. There's a lot of boxes you can check off. The sustainability box. Yeah. That definition is a little gray, but sustainability, keep it green. And then the performance and the cost, which I know sometimes people say biotech is expensive, maybe in the world of pharmaceuticals, but then we can see that the costs are coming down or that there's technologies that are enabling the costs to come down.
I got a take on it like this. When I first started working with industrial biotechnology, sustainability was not a part of everyone's lexicon. And I spent a lot of time traveling the world talking about technology and how it could change what companies are doing and how they're addressing their products to the world.
Today, sustainability is a part of everyone's lexicon. Actually, today, every company I talk to has a biological department or a bio department. Back then, none of them did. So the tools of biology have certainly become more ingrained and sustainability is a part of everybody's language.
But I think what biology has always done is it's given us the opportunity to rethink how we're doing things. And so I see biology as a great inspiration. So today, even though sustainability is everywhere and bio departments are in every company, biology keeps giving us a reason to rethink how we're making things to serve what humans need going forward.
Yeah. Another great clip. You're so good. Damien, you're so good. Okay. All right. So, you know, this NCT is found in trace amounts of peppercorns. Can you give us an example of another molecule found in trace amounts that was amplified into greater quantities that was then used for wellness or therapeutic purposes? I mean, I think the pharmaceutical industry is absolutely full of examples like this.
There's a number of pain meds, you know, which were found in nature, which needed to be amplified in terms of their expression or needed to be turned into a host to produce them. So this is not a new idea that we look to nature for the inspiration of a molecule that does something.
But nature produces those molecules for nature's own needs. So often what we do is we look for a function, right? So do we need a barrier or do we need some type of boost? Do we need something to absorb free radicals? Like what's the function we're looking for? And with that inspiration in mind, nature's been able to provide.
But I think where humans have had to intervene is to get to a way to use that natural system and amplify it. So then we can, I use this word industrialize. Industrialize is about bringing volume and consistency, which nature's not good about volume and consistency.
Nature will produce what they want when they want it in the way that it wants it. So we have to bring some human intervention to that to make it useful for us. Yeah. Excellent. Cool. Okay. So next question.
All right. On the regulatory side, getting a novel biotech-derived ingredient to market in the U.S. is getting more complex. That's right. So grass approval alone can take two years or more. And the rules around it are actively being rethought today.
So what's your plan for navigating that timeline? Does it change how you sequence the business? The FDA has always been an important partner for ensuring that Americans have access to safe ingredients and safe products.
And I think it's important that that continues. The FDA, in its prior wisdom, had developed a self-grasks pathway where the burden of demonstrating safety falls upon the companies who are bringing the ingredients to market.
And that's because there is a huge number of supplements and health and food products that we as consumers in America have access to. That's a volume far greater than any agency I think could have ever handled.
But they developed a procedure, you know, and that procedure for self-grasks is you develop your dossier. And then you assemble an independent panel of experts to review your information. And it's that panel that then declares whether they believe your assertion that this product is safe for its specific use.
That has been a pathway that has unlocked the journey for innumerous number of products to enter the marketplace. And I think it's been very supportive of innovation. There is an extra step whereby you could take that assertion to the FDA.
And that's what people refer to as FDA grass. And it's not that the FDA declares it to be safe. It's the FDA agrees with your assertion that it is safe. By statute, they're supposed to do that in nine months.
In reality, you're right, it takes closer to two years. And so our pathway, which is a pathway so many take, is self-grasks allows you to enter the marketplace, right? But you do need a sufficient body of evidence to support that assertion.
And then you go to the FDA and you have your meeting and they say, it looks like your dossier is sufficient for us to do a review. We'll undertake a review. And then you forget about it. And then two years later, hopefully they come back and they agree with your assertion.
I think that that FDA sign-off is critical if you want to become a massive ingredient, right? If you want a partner, if you want a global brand to invest and maybe even acquire your supplement line, is the risk of them doing so with that FDA question overhanging is sort of like that needs to be resolved.
Yeah. So that's important for that type of angle. But also if you're going to be touching a lot of people, you know, then the FDA should be paying a lot more attention. Yeah. And so I think it's important.
You're right. There are perhaps challenges to that process that's been entertained by federal government at the moment. I'm hoping smart and cool heads prevail in that, you know, the fact that it should take nine months, it takes two years, speaks to a process within the FDA in just doing their agreement with your assertion that's already overwhelmed.
And so, you know, I do believe the government is looking for ways of improving the safety of what Americans consume, but also not to sort of destroy business and destroy the function of government at the same time.
So, you know, I hope they find a way that even streamlines that process further whilst preserving safety. I think doing away or changing that self-grasp process would be a great challenge to a lot of companies.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I want to circle back to what you talked about when it comes to industrial biotech and your experience. We recently helped co-author an article, a report called The Molecule Manifesto for the Advanced Biotech for Sustainability Coalition.
We worked with a lot of big companies and McKinsey served as a data partner. And the assertion there was that industrial biotech has stalled for 20 years because the focus was on creating platforms. And the way to the path forward is to be more molecule led as opposed to and to focus on molecules that have real demand.
Given that you've worked on the industrial biotech side, specifically on the commercialization side, do you think that assertion is true? And what if not, what needs to change? Yeah. I think there was probably an evolutionary step that even predates the one that you just mentioned.
And around 2006, 2007, we had sort of a huge surge in oil prices. And I don't know if you remember Al Gore on the cherry picker in The Inconvenient Truth showing where carbon dioxide levels were going, right? Yeah.
It was a really big aha moment for a lot of people. And the Department of Energy actually published a report called The Top 10 Biobased Chemicals. And that was a product-focused, I won't call it a manifesto because I've read your manifesto.
It's fantastic. But it was more of like, here's some guide rails to the industry of what you should be working on. A number of academic labs, a lot of startups around the world focused in on those top 10 chemicals.
Well, one of the things that was missing is what's the market-side perspective of what they need? Yeah. It was more of a, we have a capability to produce certain products. Let's push that product forward.
I think in looking at your manifesto, one of the things I really, really like is that it's almost like a call for business cases. Yeah. Yeah. In that we should become product-focused as we were originally.
And I 100% agree with that. But in becoming product-focused, we need to understand where those products go. Let me come back to that in just one moment. What happened in the middle is venture capital got involved.
Yeah. And if you speak to a venture capitalist about a first-of-a-kind technology, the insurance they look for is if your first product fails, what are you going to work on next? Yeah. And so you had to have a platform.
And a platform gives you that story that says, we're going to have this sort of slow ramp when we get the first product into market, then everyone realizes it works. And our platform value will balloon and will hockey stick up.
If you didn't have that in your story, you weren't getting funded. Right? So it's sort of like the nature of how money works in this industry forced the platform, the great surge of platform companies.
Even in my experience at Genomatica, the platform story secured us our Series B investment. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a big one. It enabled us to do a lot of things, but we couldn't have got there if it wasn't for the platform story.
But again, you've got to go somewhere. So I want to come back to the moment that I parked. But I have great empathy for new companies starting out in trying to understand what do we work on. I have lost count of the number of companies who have come forward and said, we're working on this product.
Why? Well, because we can. And now I'll create a story of why I think it's going to have a compelling market effect. And when I do product number two, I'm going to have a lot more market insight because you have to live this journey a little bit before you can master it.
Yeah. And so we have to be forgiving of people who make an attempt to dare to commercialize something. You're generating learning. So I do think those companies who have the opportunity to focus on products two and three and four really have that privilege of into market perspective.
And I think in your manifesto, as you call upon the importance of that is 100% correct. Then let's just layer on the support structures to help people get more of that market side insight. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the venture side because it's something we talk about a lot between us and also when it comes to the podcast.
Because we know that venture, once you accept that money, you're on a sprint. And industrial biotech takes a lot longer than three to five years. We're talking about a potential 10 to 15-year journey.
But we tried a lot in the manifesto, we really tried to say these are the molecules that can be done in the next five to 10 years. Yeah. Given the technology, given potential investment, and given the infrastructure that already exists or needs to be built.
So I'm glad you agreed it and you enjoyed it. Yeah. If you look at what biobased chemicals we have in the market today that are successful, most of them are new compounds that didn't have well understood applications when they started out.
And they've taken 20 years to kind of grow into the market. So if you're a VC and your entrepreneur is pitching to you a 20-year return on investment, that just doesn't work. So then the art becomes in these sort of innovation journeys is how do you find sort of interim valuation points where one group of investors can have their life cycle and move on, but then the next group of investors can carry you to that next phase and to that next phase.
Hopefully, though, we don't need five to 10 years for everything. And I think that's one of the things we're trying to tackle with exozymes is why supplements? Well, because we'd like to target a return on investment in more of a three to four year timeframe for our investors than, say, five to seven.
And in doing that, we build muscle memory, right, in the organization. So it's not just vision and foresight. It's like as an organization having the systems and the people who are developed and trained to go and tackle something more ambitious.
So, you know, beyond NCT, exozymes has already produced cannabinoids, santoline, and sustainable aviation fuels, also known as SAF. How does a team choose what to work on? And then this point of how do you choose what you're going to spin out to be its own entity? I love joining exozymes when I did because it was a time when we were thinking through what are the markets we want to impact and why.
When I joined exozymes, I had come over from a role at Jivo, where I was chief business over there. And we were very much focused on sustainable aviation fuel. But that was a company that was very mature.
It was long, long into its journey. And to look at a startup and say, you know, sustainable aviation fuel is one of the options we have is like, yeah, okay, great. We might have a technology that can make a great impact here.
But that's a long journey. So let's focus on where the journeys can be shorter so we can build the muscle memory that I just referred to. So NCT floated up to the top as we were going through our ideation for a couple of reasons.
One, it was a natural product. So we knew that there was a pathway that existed in nature. So we had something to be inspired by. Two, there was demonstrated preclinical results. So we knew this was a performance compound.
And three, it struggled because you couldn't make it. And so that spoke directly to the heart of what we were capable of doing. So that sort of trifecta came together and we said, aha, we need to now go and tackle this opportunity.
But beyond NCT, we have what we call an idea management system inside the company, which is sort of a formalized process. And what I love most about this is that hopper of new ideas gets filled by the employees of the company.
Yeah. What's the science they can get really excited about? Because if you can excite a scientist, then you're on the edge of something really creative. Yeah. But then the discipline becomes, well, how do you build a business case around each of those ideas? And it's the business case that then helps the ideas float out of the hopper to come into consideration of like, what do we invest in next? Which I think lines up very nicely with the molecule manifesto.
Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea management system. I think we need one of those. I think we do too. There's too many ideas floating around. Just still floating around. We've got to scrap one. Well, we had the idea of a podcast.
Here we are. Yeah. Okay. All right. So now we're going to do a bit of visioneering. Okay. Okay. So looking ahead, if everything goes according to plan, how does the world look different in five to 10 years because of what Exozymes and NCTX are building today? I mean, the obvious and the first thought that comes to my mind is delighted investors.
It's sort of one of those disciplines I think in general in the industrial biotechnology, synthetic biology world has been a little elusive. And it touches on what you said, Carl. It's like this is a hard game.
Yeah. Changing biomanufacturing. So changing manufacturing is a hard, hard game. So visioneering would be delighted investors because delighted investors means more investors. More investors means more ideas.
More ideas means even bigger change for better for humankind. So there's a nice sort of ecosystem that gets established there. I think another interesting indicator would be every major global company that works in this space of human health or even human progress has a self-free department.
To me, that says that what we've started has become much more mainstream. And then if I look at our babies, our children, is, you know, they've found their homes. Like NCT is helping to make the lives of people better.
The other products we have in our pipeline also moving into a role in commercialization. And I'd love to think in that five-year to 10-year timeframe, we're looking at the company exozymes as being more mainstream, but also looking for reinvention.
Yeah. Is this innovation cycle really going to work like we want it to work? Because in five years, we need to almost be redundant. You know, what's the next amazing thing we could be working on? Yeah.
That's amazing. Yeah. All right. So we're going to move into the kind of fun, quickfire part of the interview. I've seen others perform on this and I've been a little bit nervous thinking about what's going to happen here next.
Well, it's kind of up to us and to you, depending on how quickly, you know, you answer the questions. So let me kick it off and then you'll go next. If you could put NCT into one unexpected food or drink, what would you put it in? Ooh.
Okay. Selfishly, I just love ice cream. You know, it's something I completely indulge in anywhere in the world. And I remember when we saw the first results of NCT, it was like this really nice, sharp, crystalline powder.
And it reminded me a little bit like malt. Yeah. Yeah. And so malt on my ice cream is just an absolute to die for. So if I could put NCT on ice cream, I would be a very happy individual. Awesome. Wow.
Yeah. That's a nice balance. Yeah. Eating the fat, burning the fat. I know my mitochondria are cranking away. Yeah. Oh my, that's awesome. It's like burn, burn, burn, burn. Burn, maybe burn. Yeah. Okay.
So if NCT were a superhero, what would its superpower be? Okay. I'm reminded of that movie, WALL-E. It's a great movie. Yeah, isn't it? And it's like humans are up in space and they're pods doing their thing.
And then there's this tiny little robot down on the surface of the planet, just like cleaning, cleaning up the disaster that we, that we left. So I think of NCT a little bit like I think of WALL-E, like that character that's just running around, just doing its job, happy to be doing its job.
And in doing so, sort of making the earth, the body of our home, hopefully better. Awesome. I love that. That's such a good movie, isn't it? I will remember that forever. Thank you. Thank you for that.
So one of the powers of the exercise platform is the ability to scale up the production of nature's molecules that are produced in very small quantities. What's a molecule that's in nature that is produced in very small quantities that you know about that you would like to put in the platform to scale up? Cannabinoids.
You know, I think there's a moment now for cannabinoids. I think the White House is starting to lean into this subject, which means sort of general Americans are becoming more informed on the importance of our endocannabinoid system.
I think cannabinoids can play a really, really important role in helping to modulate mood, pain, even appetite regulation. But we haven't been able to successfully take these many, many, many compounds that have known sort of therapeutic effect and commercialize them.
I'd love to see that we could unlock that because I think it would be a massive unlock. And some of those molecules are very complex. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. No, I was going to say, yeah. I mean, I think one cannabis plant has about 400 different compounds.
So one of them could really unlock something amazing. It's an amazing amount of diversity. But I think a lot of people don't understand is they actually regulate a known regulatory system in our body.
So, I mean, it has a pathway. It has a mechanism. But we just need to unlock safe cannabinoids, you know, non-psychedelic cannabinoids that can actually target those benefits. And then I think there's a massive amount of therapeutic benefit that can be created from that.
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, psychedelic too for some of the mental things can also be helpful. But I'm talking about a pathway. A commercial pathway that folks can get behind. But, yes, I don't want to take away from the other side.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll have to have another podcast about the endocannabinoid system. It's very interesting. We need an idea of management system for those other podcasts. We'll put it in yours. We'll put it in yours.
Great. Okay. So here's another fun one. So you're at a dinner party and someone asks you what you do. What's your one-liner that gets them interested? Oh, I'd start with g'day. That always works well for an icebreaker.
I'd be like, g'day. My name's Damien. And I turn nature's potential into human breakthroughs. Love it. Amazing. And what's one thing about cell-free biomanufacturing that people don't understand that they should? I think people need to understand that cell-free is about a pathway.
When I talk to people about what we do, that seems to be sort of the common misconception. It's like, for one, what are exozymes? And I talk about enzymes that operate outside the cell. I talk about the limitations of the cell.
But I think people still have this mind that enzymes are about single-point transformations, which is true. But we deploy a cascade of enzymes. So we're about a pathway. So we're transforming multiple times.
And I think that's the thing that a lot of people should understand. Because each transformation opens up a little more potential for diversity. But you can still do it in a targeted way. So it means we have ways of solving for many, many, many product needs through that diversity.
But still, ultimately, we're a pathway that goes from an input to a desired output. And that's where microbial engineering and fermentation sort of became first important to us, is this ability to make absolutely anything via a pathway.
Or we can make anything with a pathway. But if we take that pathway out of the living system, we now have a simple system that scales more like traditional chemistry. Amazing. Well, thank you, Damien, for coming on the Grow Everything podcast.
This has been great. It's been so much fun. I've been very excited about it. I have long drives between my home in San Diego and the office up in Monrovia because I come up once a week to be with the team, which means I get plenty of podcast listening time.
And you guys have become a constant companion for me. So thank you for that. Oh, thank you. So you know everything about us. Yeah, no. And we want to wish you and the team at Echocytes all the best. Very, very excited about what you're doing.
So fascinating. Yeah, we can't wait to have you come on again to talk about your progress. And cannabinoids. And cannabinoids. We'd love to. And so that means two successful milestones ahead for us all.