What our Partnership with Olon Means for Pharma (and How You’ll Benefit)

Your pipeline is a moving target. You likely have one asset entering Phase II, another approaching scale-up, and perhaps a mature product facing the looming pressure of Loss of Exclusivity (LoE).

Each asset has a different urgency. Each has a different risk profile. And each could benefit from a process rethink — one that, ideally, decides to leverage the many benefits of biocatalysis.

In our experience, the main question pharma leaders should be asking themselves at this point is not "Can we introduce an enzymatic step somewhere?", but rather: “Can we quickly identify the most optimal path from A to B?”

And to find that optimal path, we believe that four strategic pillars must be taken into consideration. We call them the 4 Ps:

• • Possible: does the process actually work under real-world conditions?
  • Protectable: can you build a defensive wall around the process?
  • Practical: how fast can you get a PoC?
  • Prioritizable: does it fit your current business needs?

The partnership between Zymvol and Olon is designed to tick all four of these boxes at once. By integrating our physics-based AI enzyme design with Olon’s global CDMO manufacturing expertise, we’ve built a bridge from digital certainty to industrial reality.

Let’s look at how this alliance is meant to completely change the way you work:

1. Technical Viability (or How to Make Your Process Possible)

The first hurdle to overcome is always technical: What is the best way to build this molecule? 

And to answer this question, you’ve got to focus on the essential: finding out what’s the optimal path to go from A to B.

This is perhaps the most valuable asset that the Olon-Zymvol collaboration is meant to provide. Olon is exceptionally good at suggesting chemical routes of synthesis, while Zymvol is exceptionally good at suggesting biochemical ones. Combine the two and you’ve got the full design space assessed before a route is locked in.

Thanks to this approach, the benefits for your pharmaceutical process are immediate:

• Improved COGS: Finding the most cost-effective path from the start.
• Fewer Steps: Transforming complex chemical synthesis into a streamlined process thanks to enzymes.
• Higher Purity: Achieving ultra-clean results that chemistry alone struggles to reach.

2. IP Security (or How to Make Your Process Protectable)

Did you know that protecting an engineered enzyme is often easier than protecting a standard chemical process? This is due to a patent application’s need to prove significant technical improvement —something that is much simpler to achieve with biocatalysis because each enzyme is customized to your particular chemistry.

An effective IP strategy can go a long way in protecting your process from competitors. For this, we offer two alternatives:

One way you can benefit from more protectable pharmaceutical processes is by leveraging Zymvol’s Enzyme Discovery solution, which uses Biomatchmaker® technology to explore the entire enzyme sequence space and identify all possible active enzymes. Afterwards, you can optimize the best hit and generate variants that offer extra protection for your particular reaction.

A second and key way is through a patent cascade: once a process has been protected, its useful life can be extended by applying improvements either through Enzyme Optimization or by identifying novel enzymes, year on year, to expand the sequence space.

3. Operational Speed (or How to Make Your Process Practical)

In our experience, every pharma company we’ve ever worked with wants the same thing: a Proof of Concept (PoC) as quickly as possible so they can begin manufacturing product samples. The sooner the PoC is ready, the sooner the drug can move along the development gates and hit the market.

Thanks to our use of predictive modeling, most of the screening is run in the computer rather than in a wet lab, which has helped our clients reach that PoC much faster (and cheaper) than through traditional methods. 

However, there’s another practical issue we wanted to solve: the transition from a technology provider (lab scale) to a CDMO (production).

It’s usually a real headache—expensive and slow. But now, with the Olon-Zymvol partnership, the enzyme manufacturer is involved from the very beginning, so there is no "lost time" during tech transfer. It’s a seamless transition from our prototype to their plant.

4. Portfolio Alignment (or How to Make Your Process Prioritizable)

If you're managing ten simultaneous drug programs, your needs change depending on the phase you're in. That’s why you need a model that, above all, is flexible.

The Olon-Zymvol partnership provides an end-to-end solution for enzyme development, ensuring that your R&D resources are always hitting the highest-impact targets for your current portfolio.

Summary

At the end of the day, integrating biocatalysis is a strategic business decision. The alliance between Zymvol and Olon was designed so that the path from A to B is not just a guess, but a calculated, scalable, and defensible industrial reality.

Would you like us to run a quick diagnostic on your current pipeline?

The Feasibility Engine can help you identify which routes have the most potential for success.

Receive an enzyme development recommendation, including budget and timeline estimation, in a matter of days.