APEXymes: Pioneering Affordable Enzymes
Larissa de Farias Viana, CEO of APEXzymes, is a chemical engineer with a master's degree in Advanced Sciences and Technologies from ESPCI Paris. After gaining experience in venture capital and venture building, she teamed up with APEXzymes co-founders Lucas Parreiras and Lucas Fonseca to spearhead the company's business development efforts.
APEXzymes is pioneering a proprietary enzyme production process that leverages alternative, low-cost raw materials and simplified manufacturing methods. Coupled with innovative business models, their aim is to make enzymes more accessible for sustainable applications—particularly in the animal feed and biofuels sectors—where environmental impact and cost-efficiency must go hand in hand. DeliveryRank sits down with Larissa for an exclusive interview.
Apexzymes emphasizes transforming agro-industry by-products into high-value catalysts. Could you elaborate on the specific by-products you utilize and the process by which they are converted into functional enzymes?
Our primary goal is to turn currently impossible or difficult enzyme applications into sustainable and cost-effective solutions. Considering that in some cases the feedstock to produce enzymes can account for up to 60% of production costs, looking for alternative and low-cost raw materials is a promising strategy. That’s why we propose to produce enzymes from agro-industry by-products, specially from sugarcane and soy industries. We take advantage of our location in Brazil, where we have easy access to this type of material, and develop technologies around it.
Put very simply, we genetically engineer microorganisms that produce enzymes to make them able to consume the alternative raw materials we want to work with. Their metabolism then turns the feedstock into enzymes we can use to process biomass or bleach cellulose, for example.
Given the scalability of your enzyme production, how does Apexzymes ensure consistency and quality across large batches, especially when sourcing raw materials from diverse agro-industrial waste streams?
This question highlights how tricky it is to deliver the technology we are mastering. Currently, the industry relies on expensive feedstocks precisely because it is easier to ensure constant productivity levels if you are working with standardized and consistent material.
Avoiding technicalities, we can draw an analogy with humans. We eat a large variety of food in order to have energy and keep our metabolism going. If we have an apple or a slice of bread, the final outcome will be sugar to produce energy either way. What we do to our microorganisms is turn their metabolism ‘blind’ like ours: we adapt them so they can react properly to the feedstock we are offering and produce the enzymes we selected just like if they were given the traditional feedstock currently used in the industry.
Although we are not yet operating in industrial scale, our current stage tests indicate a consistent performance with a variety of feedstocks.
Sustainability is a core aspect of your operations. How does Apexzymes measure the environmental impact of its processes, and what steps are taken to minimize the carbon footprint associated with enzyme production?
The main environmental impact will be seen when clients apply our enzyme cocktails on their processes, reducing methane emissions during meat production or turning low carbon fuels cheaper to produce and therefore more accessible to consumers, for example. At our current stage, we do not have a precise quantification. However, our roadmap focuses on life cycle analysis that will allow us to measure these impacts.
Considering the enzyme production itself, there are two aspects to look at. The first, is our use of by-products as feedstock. This allows us to contribute to circular economy practices and our feedstock does not compete with human food resources, which is already a great place to start.
The second aspect is our business model. We have discussed with potential clients the possibility of licensing our process, allowing them to produce enzymes locally on their factories. This is an advantage for them in terms of independency and cost reduction with storage and logistics, but it is also a great way to reduce the footprint associated with enzyme production.
In the long term, we can even picture a process where side streams from a client’s factory can be used as feedstock to produce enzymes. This is an example of what our technology can bring in terms of sustainability: local waste converted into high-value enzymes that deliver a sustainable impact.
In the competitive enzyme market, what distinguishes Apexzymes' products in terms of efficacy and application versatility across different industries?
APEXzymes is all about cost reduction to unlock and expand markets. We rarely compete in established markets. Instead, we focus on sectors that currently can’t apply enzymes on their process due to high costs, despite the sustainability advantages that they could bring.
Our cattle feed application is a perfect example: despite dozens of studies showing how complex enzyme cocktails can improve productivity and sustainability in meat production, there are very few products on the market trying to deliver these results. The ones that do exist perform poorly, because a rich formulation would be too expensive to produce. Our technology comes to unlock all the potential of this application.
Another scenario we are interested in is the one where the client is already dependent on enzymes, but their production cost is heavily impacted by the high cost of these enzymes. That is the case for the cellulosic biofuel industry, where over 30% of their production costs are related to enzymes. This is the type of sector where we can have a huge impact with a low-cost product, making low-carbon fuels a lot more viable and accessible.
Research and development are crucial in biotechnology. How does Apexzymes approach innovation, and are there any upcoming enzyme solutions or technologies that you're particularly excited about?
Considering that our core business is the development of a pioneer enzyme production process, we can say that innovation drives everything we do. Our goal is to unlock new enzyme markets based on the unprecedented cost reduction we can offer.
Something that really excites us is the use of artificial intelligence to expand our possibilities. We can use AI to support our genetic engineering design phase, helping us to explore better gene combinations, for instance. Also, we can explore unprecedented enzyme formulations and, thinking more long term, we can consider engineering existing enzymes to adapt them for different purposes. The way our R&D is structured, we already operate under quick “test and get feedbacks” loops, and AI is a great way to diversify our portfolio and allow us to explore bolder solutions based on the exceptional know-how we already have in-house.
Given that APEXzymes primarily operates in markets like cattle feed, how do you see your enzyme solutions indirectly influencing the broader food industry, and what opportunities do you foresee in bridging animal nutrition and human food systems?
We understand the climate emergency demands solutions NOW! Our enzymes for cattle feed allow for production practices to remain the same, and the final outcome will be the dairy and meat we have always known. However, we improve the digestion process of these animals, allowing for more efficient rumination and better nutrient absorption. As a result, we have a reduced carbon footprint per unit of meat or milk produced. Some studies suggest that improving digestibility in cows may reduce methane emissions by up to 50%, so we have margins for a great impact here. To sum up, our goal is to deliver solutions that can make the food industry, as we already know it, more environment-friendly: same product, same production process, same price for consumers, very little regulatory barriers, just less carbon emitted.
We are entering the animal feed market with a strong focus on cattle, but we do have on our radar solutions for other farm animals as well. In the near future, our technology can also positively impact swine and poultry production - making the food we already consume more sustainable.
If you would like to find out more about APEXymes, please visit http://apexzymes.com