NOVACEPT:A GROUP OF researchers from UCD have developed software to assist biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms to design industrial enzymes for use in products ranging from washing powders to beers.
Dr Martin Peters is one of the five founders of Novocept and says the software accelerates the development of new enzymes. “Enzymes are protein molecules that accelerate chemical processes. They are biodegradable, and therefore environmentally friendly, and cheap companies want to use them in their manufacturing processes,” he says.
“The idea for the product came from the fact that people want to reduce their carbon footprint, but still want nice cars and nice clothes. To reduce the impact on the environment manufacturing is going to have to use new types of enzymes.”
Natural enzymes cannot be used and companies have to reengineer them to change their characteristics, a process which can be both time-consuming and costly.
Peters says Novocept’s software can collect, analyse and integrate biological and medical data and generate simulations. “Our software is a tool used to develop the enzyme. We can predict the structure of an enzyme, we can predict different properties of an enzyme and we can change enzymes and then predict the effect of that change.
“You could carry out 100 experiments in the lab, which could take months or even years. Using our software will reduce that time and cost because instead of running 100 experiments you might only have to run 10.”
Novocept plans to trial the software in three international pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies early this year.
If the trial is successful Peters says the intention is to start selling the software this year. “The plan was always to set up an indigenous company that we can protect and that will provide jobs here.”
Work on the software started in 2004 and the company has raised over €2 million in funding from agencies such as Enterprise Ireland, Science
Foundation Ireland and Microsoft Research to fund the development.
Novocept was the runner-up in NovaUCD’s 14th campus company development awards this year.
