Solidzymes

CascadeBio Q&A

  1. What year did your company begin manufacturing materials for enzyme
    immobilization?
    Cascade’s proprietary Body Armor for Enzyme™ technology was developed in the late
    2010s in academia, first commercialized in 2020 with scale and commercialization
    accelerated with the founding of Cascade in 2022.
  2. Can you give some historical background about your company – how/why did
    it become a producer of enzyme immobilization materials?
    Cascade Bio’s co-founder and CSO James Weltz developed the company’s proprietary
    approach to immobilization during his PhD at CU Boulder. Given the success in an
    academic environment converting enzyme immobilization from art to engineering, he
    was excited to move forward with the creation of a company to commercialize the
    technology and bring it into the world.
  3. What industries do you supply?
    The company’s customers are across industries – chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food,
    agrochemicals, flavors / fragrances and more.
    In addition to selling immobilization resins, the company sells full-stack biocatalysts with
    enzymes immobilized on Cascade’s resins. Cascade’s catalog is rapidly expanding –
    please reach out to Cascade’s CEO to learn more ([email protected]).
  4. What is the maximum batch size your company can produce?
    Cascade has made 10+ kg. The plan is to scale to 100 kg in 2026 and tons later down
    the line. The company also has relationships with contract manufacturers to produce
    larger quantities including 100 kgs, 1 ton and beyond.
  5. What is your standard lead time?
    We can deliver kits of our resin consisting of 1-5 grams or 10-50 grams of material
    within 1-2 weeks. For larger quantities, it depends on what the likely best resin will be.
  6. What makes your materials special?
    Cascade is the only company that has our proprietary polymer coating for enzyme
    immobilization. In head-to-head studies, including the Lactase Case Study at
    Solidzymes this technology has shown to deliver increased performance relative to
    other competitors.
    As opposed to other immobilization approaches, Cascade’s technology enables almost
    complete activity retention upon immobilization thanks to the flexible nature of the
    proprietary polymer immobilization approach.
  7. Anything else you want people to know?
    While we work well for already scaled enzymes (lipases, etc.), we see the most
    meaningful improvements (10-100x+) with difficult enzymes (low stability, activity loss
    upon immobilization) and/or processes with difficult conditions (high temps, solvents,
    and more).
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