Swiss biotech startup hephaistos.bio has secured €161,000 (CHF 150,000) from Venture Kick to accelerate the development of custom enzyme solutions for pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing.
Chemical manufacturing remains heavily reliant on energy- and resource-intensive processes that contribute significantly to emissions and expose manufacturers to fragile global supply chains. While enzymes offer a promising alternative by enabling more efficient production, reducing costs, and lowering environmental impact, suitable biocatalysts are not available for many industrially relevant reactions, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector.
hephaistos.bio is addressing this challenge by combining computational biology, chemistry, machine learning, and structural biology to design custom protein catalysts tailored to specific industrial processes.
The company's end-to-end enzyme design platform creates biocatalysts for chemical reactions that are difficult or impossible to perform efficiently using existing solutions, helping manufacturers simplify production while improving sustainability, resilience, and cost efficiency.
Founded by Lukas Radtke (CEO), Lucas Merlicek (CTO), Jannik Neumann (Head of Operations), Moritz Ullhofen (Head of Lab), and Ilya Schneider (Head of Business Development), hephaistos.bio brings together expertise across chemistry, biotechnology, machine learning, and industrial applications to develop custom biocatalysts for industrial use.
The startup is already demonstrating the potential of its technology through an industrial pilot project with Swiss contract research organisation SpiroChem. Building on this early commercial traction, hephaistos.bio aims to support pharmaceutical and fine chemical companies in reshoring production to Europe through more competitive and sustainable manufacturing processes enabled by custom-designed enzymes.
With the new funding, hephaistos.bio plans to further advance its enzyme design platform and expand collaborations with industrial partners seeking more sustainable and economically viable alternatives to conventional chemical production.
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