Coala Biosciences — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: 300

Description

PROJECT SUMMARY As with most synthetic chemistsCoALA Biosciences is inspired by naturally occurring polyketide assembly lineswhich synthesize diverse medicines through reactions that generate carbon carbon bonds and precisely set stereocentersIf chemists were to collaborate with the enzymes in these assembly linessyntheses of compounds in the drug discovery process would be greatly accelerated and yield larger quantities for preclinical and clinical studiesCoALA Biosciences will distribute these enzymes and those from related pathways so that chemists can employ these biosynthetic biocatalystsThey will be sold in easy to use kits so that scientists who have never handled an enzyme only need to add a mixture from a single container to a solution of their substrateSince most chemists would prefer to directly purchase the organic fragments needed in the synthesis of a larger moleculechiral building blocks up to seven carbons long and containing up to four contiguous stereocenters will be produced through chemoenzymatic synthesis at CoALA Biosciences and made available on the gram scaleSpecific AimThese chiral building blocksnot available from other commercial sourceswill be a welcome addition to the limited set of chiral precursors abundant enough to be utilized in a synthesisOther biocatalysis companiese gChiralVisionCodexisDiscovery BiocatalystsEnzymicalsIris BiotechProzomixSyncoZymesempower specific chemical transformations but do not offer enzymes from assembly lines evolved to set multiple stereocenters on carbon chains or facilitate the multistep synthesis of organic compoundsBy refining the techniques employed to generate diketide and triketide chiral building blocksCoALA Biosciences will seek to access tetraketide and pentaketide fragments during Phase IIA central mission of the company is to make polyketides customizable like oligonucleotides and polypeptidesCoALA Biosciences will also empower hundreds of laboratories studying natural product biosynthesis by offering a variety of relevant enzymes and enzyme kitsSpecific AimThussimilar to how enzymatic tools from New England Biolabs can be utilized to engineer DNAversatile enzymes from CoALA Biosciences can be employed to precisely manipulate polyketides and study the biosynthesis of natural products NARRATIVE The enzymatic domains of polyketide assembly lines evolved to conduct some of the most sophisticated synthetic chemistry known to manCoALA Biosciences seeks to unleash their potentialenabling chemists and other scientists to utilize them as biocatalysts to facilitate synthesis in the drug discovery process as well as the study of natural product biosynthetic pathwaysChiral building blocks not available elsewhere will be chemoenzymatically generated at CoALA Biosciences and offered at the gram scale to accelerate synthesis and improve yields of compounds relevant to human health