Nuclera, a Cambridge (UK) and Boston (US) based biotechnology company is accelerating protein expression and purification workflows through its benchtop protein system, eProtein Discovery™. With a mission to better human health by enabling scientists to easily access the proteins they need for drug discovery research, Nuclera’s platform reduces the timelines and costs associated with protein expression and purification through automated construct screening to inform protein scale-up.
Nuclera was founded in 2013 by PhD students at the University of Cambridge. When working on their dissertations, they identified protein inaccessibility as a key bottleneck in biology. They set out to solve protein inaccessibility and this drive feeds into the Company's vision to deliver the first thought-to-protein prototyping system.
Custom protein reagents, required in drug discovery, are challenging to manufacture both in terms of cost and time associated. There is an urgent, ever-expanding need for generating soluble and active proteins to be used for downstream high throughput screening in drug discovery. Current methods of protein production are; space intensive – requiring 1,000’s sq ft of lab space, time consuming – taking up to 3 months to make protein, and have a high failure rate - > 65% using traditional E.coli based processes to make protein. Nuclera overcomes this unmet need by providing rapid access to challenging proteins in a benchtop system in less than 48 hours. Accelerating drug discovery processes by up to 30x, the platform provides sequences and optimal conditions, through a 3-step workflow (Figure 1) to inform protein manufacturing.
In April 2023, Nuclera unveiled its global headquarters at One Vision Park, Cambridge, following a successful series B fundraise. Signaling a growth phase, in the last few months Nuclera has been awarded an Innovate UK grant with AI partner DeepMirror to enable AI drug discovery and entered a partnership with Google Cloud by coupling the Company’s benchtop system with AlphaFold2.
2024 began with the appointment of life science investor, Jonathan Milner, as Chairman of the Board ahead of the first installation of eProtein Discovery™ at the University of Southampton.
Testament to the rapid growth of the Company, Nuclera has been selected, as one the of first biotechnology companies in the programmes history, to join the Tech Nation Future Fifty 2024 cohort – a unique program designed for the UK’s next generation of unicorn founders, recognizing the most promising late-stage technology ventures.
LinkedIn: @Nuclera