Erebagen is a synthetic biology company that discovers, optimises & scales truly novel bioactive products from microbes by activating previously silent biosynthetic gene clusters; we will harness data driven automation and machine intelligence to unlock the potential of bacteria, Nature’s greatest innovators.
Erebagen discovers and develops microbial bioactives from nature that have applications in human health, agriculture and industrial biotech, significant and growing markets where there remain substantial unmet needs. Erebagen is positioned to address this unmet need by focusing on the specialised bioactive metabolites made by microbes that have been shaped by evolution to provide defence in the environment over millions of years. Microbial bioactives, having evolved as active ‘hits’ are among the most successful class of compounds making up 49% of all marketed medicines. However they remain a largely untapped resource because less than 20% of the biosynthetic pathways for these metabolites are switched on when bacteria are grown in the lab. As a result it became increasingly difficult to find novel microbial bioactives, which combined with the challenges of structural modification led to reduced interest in this source of products. Over two decades Erebagen’s founders created a technology platform to overcome these and other fundamental limitations by understanding the factors governing key elements of natural bioactive biosynthesis and isolation from microbes. Erebagen11 has a proprietary technology platform that targets the >80% of the silent microbial biosynthetic gene clusters, harnessing the cells to switch on and modify the novel compounds discovered. The bacteria are used to perform structural diversification work, applying proprietary biosynthetic engineering tools and know-how to the original novel discoveries. With automation of discovery, hit rates are 20x better than in a partner’s usual screens. Erebagen’s platform can:

Discover new compounds from existing bacterial strain collections: Take a partners existing strain collection and activate silent biosynthetic pathways to provide new bioactive molecules and biocatalysts.

Provide natural products from Erebagen’s collection: Provide novel bacterial natural products as a screening resource and when hits are found create structural derivatives to better understand the bioactivity.

Growing our strain collection: Looking for collections of microbes (Gram positive and Gram negative) to add to our strain collection

Develop natural products: Use our engineering platform to create structural derivatives of complex bacterial natural products to better understand bioactivity or to removal unfavourable properties from a candidate.

Find novel natural derivatives of natural products: Using our bioinformatic tools and biosynthetic knowledge to search genomic databases for bacterial strain that can produce derivatives of natural products, confirm production and elucidate novel structures.

Discover biocatalysts: Discover and develop novel biocatalyst based off specialised metabolism to replace traditional synthetic methodologies.