eXoZymes Inc. (NASDAQ:EXOZ) and its spinout NCTx have announced a significant biomanufacturing breakthrough, successfully producing 4 grams of N-trans-caffeoyltyramine (NCT) with over 99% purity using their AI-driven exozymes platform. The achievement represents a major milestone in addressing the longstanding bottleneck of sourcing NCT from natural resources, where the compound occurs only in trace amounts.
Rapid Development Timeline and Cost Efficiency
The NCT project demonstrated remarkable speed, progressing from concept to gram-scale production in just 5 months at a fraction of normal synthetic biology R&D costs. The production achieved a 96% yield alongside the exceptional purity levels, validating the company's novel biomanufacturing approach.
"Producing 4 grams of NCT at a purity higher than 99% is the kind of validation a novel platform like ours needs, to demonstrate the immense potential," stated Dr. Tyler Korman, Co-founder and VP of Research at eXoZymes. "Compared to extracting this from natural resources, which is the current way, you would need tens of kilograms of hemp seeds to produce the same quantity and then you'd have the headache of extracting it."
Addressing Natural Sourcing Limitations
NCT naturally occurs in quantities less than 0.014% per hemp seed, making traditional extraction methods neither effective nor sustainable. This scarcity has severely limited the compound's commercial potential despite growing research interest in its therapeutic applications.
The exozymes platform offers a sustainable alternative by utilizing advanced enzymes enhanced through AI and bioengineering to function in bioreactors without living cells. This cell-free approach eliminates the scaling bottlenecks that have historically hampered commercial success in the synthetic biology space.
Therapeutic Potential and Market Applications
NCT has attracted considerable interest from researchers and drug developers for its potential role in healthy liver fat metabolism, gut barrier function, and mitochondrial activity. Preclinical studies have demonstrated several promising therapeutic effects:
- Enhanced fat breakdown and mitochondrial output in liver cells
- No observed toxicity in short-term animal models
- Potential as a NAFLD (now called MASLD) treatment candidate
- Modulation of gut-related gene expression linked to intestinal balance for better gut health
The compound has already been self-affirmed as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for functional foods, providing a regulatory advantage for commercialization across multiple verticals including prebiotics, dietary supplements, and pharmaceuticals.
Commercial Scale-Up Plans
Chief Commercial Officer Damien Perriman outlined ambitious scaling plans for NCT production. "We're ramping up NCT production scale 100X over the next six months to both deliver samples to our partners as well as prepare for tech transfer to GMP pilot scale production next year," Perriman stated. "We are ready to start partner discussions for kilogram demand in 2026 and beyond that - ton scale."
The company is actively seeking early access partners under material transfer agreements to sample the product and accelerate the journey from R&D breakthrough to commercial reality.
Market Context and Platform Technology
The bioactive ingredients market for functional foods represents a $216 billion market growing at 7.6% CAGR globally. eXoZymes' exozymes platform positions the company to capture value in this expanding market by offering sustainable alternatives to traditional petrochemical processes and inefficient biochemical extraction methods.
Founded in 2019, eXoZymes has developed what it describes as a historic first in biomanufacturing - a platform that can design, engineer, control and optimize natural processes to produce chemical compounds. The technology transforms biomass into essential chemicals, medicines, and biofuels while eliminating the cellular limitations that have constrained previous synthetic biology approaches.
The company views exozymes as a new nomenclature for next-generation biomanufacturing and has chosen not to trademark the concept, instead promoting its wide adoption across the industry while positioning itself as the market leader in this emerging field.
