Day Two

Thursday, November 13

8:00 am Coffee & Networking

8:50 am Chair’s Opening Remarks

Driving Faster Enzyme Engineering & Smarter Decisions with AI Innovations

9:00 am Roundtable Discussion: Making Sense of AI in Biocatalysis Today & Setting Priorities for Tomorrow

  • Jason Donald Senior Director - Protein Engineering, Stylus Medicine

Synopsis

  • Examining the current limitations and challenges in AI methods for enzyme and protein design
  • Exploring how companies are overcoming hurdles to make AI more practical and predictive
  • Assessing the real-world viability of AI technologies and identifying next steps for advancement

9:30 am ScalaOS: Optimizing Enzyme Activity, Selectivity, & Stability Through Computational Design

  • Ravit Netzer Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Scala Biodesign

Synopsis

  • ScalaOS demonstrated major gains in stability, activity, selectivity, and expression through one design round and with no tradeoffs. 
  • ScalaOS is an intuitive, no-code interface that enables adoption by both computational and experimental enzyme engineers.
  • Scala’s technologies have been adopted by leading pharma and chemical companies and validated in 130+ publications and collaborations worldwide.

10:00 am Morning Break & Networking

Exploring Untapped Enzymes & Improving Engineering Success to Enhance Industrial Biocatalysis

11:00 am Exploring Untapped Enzyme Classes for New Industrially Relevant Reactions

  • Amelia Gilio Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Biocatalysis, Pfizer

Synopsis

  • Expanding substrate scope to unlock reactivity in underexplored enzyme classes or clades
  • Leveraging high-throughput screening and engineering to develop biocatalysts for industrial applications

11:30 am Digital Enzyme Evolution – A Deeply Integrated Workflow to Accelerate Enzyme Engineering

  • Tim Eyes Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Imperagen

Synopsis

  • Harnessing Digital Integration: combining AI-directed design, efficient biology and wet-lab automation, and data management in a seamless, digitalised workflow.
  • Training AI on High-Quality Data: merging rapid physics-based modelling with rich experimental datasets to guide intelligent, predictive enzyme design.
  • From Design to Demonstration: applying our efficient workflow to deliver significant performance gains in real-world enzyme case studies.

11:40 am Microheterogeneity on Enzyme: Formation, Analysis and Effects of Structural Variants

Synopsis

  • Understanding common mechanisms that lead to microheterogeneity, such as post-translational modifications (PTMs), degradation and modifications by reactive metabolites and excipients
  • Recognizing why microheterogeneity often goes undetected and learning analytical strategies to accurately assess protein quality
  • Discussing strategies to improve the success of enzyme engineering efforts by controlling microheterogeneity

12:10 pm Lunch Break

Combining Biocatalysis & Chemical Catalysis to Expand Synthetic Capabilities

1:30 pm Biocatalytic & Chemo-Enzymatic Strategies to Access Novel Amino Acids & Medicinally Relevant Small Molecules

Synopsis

  • Harnessing the unique selectivity of enzymes to solve longstanding challenges in chemical synthesis
  • Leveraging recent breakthroughs in enzyme engineering and genome mining to unlock new synthetic possibilities
  • Developing innovative hybrid strategies that integrate biocatalysis with modern chemical methodologies for the synthesis of noncanonical amino acids and medicinally relevant molecules

2:00 pm Bridging Biological and Chemical Approaches with Chemoenzymatic Catalysis

  • Sam Mallinson Researcher III, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Synopsis

  • Expanding the chemical space for synthetic co-factors and engineering enzymes to utilize these novel tools
  • Integrating chemical and enzymatic catalysis to develop advanced chemoenzymatic pathways
  • Bridging biocatalysis with applications in commodity chemicals and pharmaceuticals to achieve shared industrial goals

2:30 pm Afternoon Break & Networking

Advancing Biocatalytic Processes for Peptide Drugs Using Protein Engineering & Cascade Reactions

3:30 pm Protein Engineering Unlocks Biocatalytic Processes for a Peptide Drug

Synopsis

  • Details TBC

4:00 pm A Scalable Enzyme Cascade for the Synthesis of Non-Canonical Amino Acids in Peptide Drug Development

Synopsis

  • Developing a toolbox that allows for the rapid development of non-canonical amino acids
  • Leveraging cascade reactions to yield time and cost savings
  • Showcasing this reaction at the 50-100g scale

4:30 pm End of the 5th Applied Biocatalysis & Enzyme Engineering Summit