HydRegen receives funding to implement their proprietary enzyme platform into sustainable chemical processes

Oxford, UK, 1 March 2022 / HydRegen, the revolutionary bioscience company, enables sustainable chemical manufacturing using their proprietary enzyme based redox platform. The company has received £385,000 in new funding from the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), alongside private investors, to work in collaboration with pharmaceutical and fine chemical companies that want to reduce their costs and environmental impact.

Development of greener and less wasteful processes is at the forefront for many companies who are under increasing regulatory, policy and financial pressures to improve their sustainability. HydRegen is addressing unmet needs in the chemical sector, most specifically around the challenges associated with redox reactions*, their waste generation and use of toxic metals.

The newly raised funds will enable HydRegen to invest in the people and resources required to develop and scale up its platform and subsequent implementation into new chemical processes. HydRegen will work alongside major UK-based pharmaceutical and chemical company Almac Sciences, part of the Almac Group, to evaluate a joint technology development project for large-scale manufacture of a commodity chemical. The project will use enzyme technologies from both companies, in a multi-enzyme system, to develop a low-cost manufacturing process, producing cost effective green alternatives to commodities.

Since spinning out from the University of Oxford in 2021, HydRegen has focused on implementation of their new strategies for reducing the environmental impact of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing, by switching the power source for biocatalysis from glucose to hydrogen gas. With a vision to replace finite resources, like metals, with environmentally and economically sustainable alternatives, HydRegen believes it must focus on lowering the barrier to entry for evaluation and scale up of redox bioprocesses. This is something that Governments around the world are also pushing for as they encourage energy intensive businesses to share expertise and come up with radical new innovations to help reduce their carbon footprint.

Contributing £300,000, UKI2S is a national seed investment fund that nurtures innovative businesses, providing the patient, long-term committed capital and strategic advice they need to flourish.

Dr Holly Reeve, CEO at HydRegen said: “We are very excited to have received the funds required for us to take our enzyme platform to the next stage and move another step closer to commercialising our technology in applications that will help our clients meet their Net Zero goals. This additional funding provides us with a huge opportunity to work with world leading speciality chemical companies on scaling up the production of our biocatalysts and ultimately, licensing our technology across a wide range of applications. This research and testing could help HydRegen to become part of the ‘advanced manufacturing tool-box’ across the chemical industry.”

Prof. Tom Moody, VP Technology Development and Commercialisation at Almac comments: “We look forward to working with HydRegen towards the implementation of a sustainable multi-enzyme system for the manufacture of a commodity chemical and demonstration of the process at scale.”

Andy Muir, Investment Director at UKI2S, added: “Backing companies with sustainability at their core is a major priority that will help shape the economy and human lives in a positive way. We are delighted to support HydRegen’s innovative platform that aims to catalyse the much-needed transition to net-zero chemical manufacturing and improve the pharmaceutical industry’s impact on the environment.”

* Redox reactions are a type of chemical reaction characterised by the transfer of electrons between chemical substances. Redox (reduction-oxidisation) is the gain of electrons, or decrease in the oxidation state, of a chemical substance.

ENDS

For more information please contact:

Rebecca Noonan, PR Consultant, BX Consulting Services
Email: rebecca@bx-consulting.co.uk
Mobile: +44 (0)7572 873300

Holly Reeve, CEO, HydRegen Ltd
Email: holly@hydregenoxford.com

Notes to editors:
HydRegen Ltd
HydRegen Ltd is pioneering a novel biotechnology that enables more sustainable chemical manufacture. At HydRegen, we are passionate about reducing the environmental impact of chemical manufacturing and committed to enabling companies across the chemicals sector to improve their energy and resource efficiency whilst moving towards continuous manufacturing processes.

Almac Group
The Almac Group is an established contract development and manufacturing organisation providing an extensive range of integrated services across the drug development lifecycle to the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors globally. Its innovative services range from R&D, biomarker discovery development and commercialisation, API manufacture, analytical services, formulation development, clinical trial supply, IRT (IVRS/IWRS) through to commercial-scale manufacture.

The international company is a privately owned organisation which has grown organically over the past five decades now employing over 6,000 highly skilled personnel across 19 facilities including Europe, the US and Asia.

To keep up to date with latest news, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn or visit almacgroup.com.

UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S)
UKI2S is a national seed investment fund that nurtures innovative businesses from great UK science to leverage private investment and grow jobs. The Fund is backed by UKRI, Dstl and other public bodies and is independently managed by specialist venture capital firm Midven, part of Future Planet Capital, the impact-led, global venture capital firm built to invest in high growth potential companies from the world’s top research centres. UKI2S provides the patient, long-term committed capital and strategic advice these companies need to flourish. Over the past decade and more, the fund has built a substantial track record of companies that between them have attracted over £600m of later stage investment. Learn more at https://ukinnovationscienceseedfund.co.uk/ or follow us on Twitter