Zylidac Bio, a fully integrated biologics CDMO within the Zydus Lifesciences Limited (Zydus) group, and Prolific Machines, a biotechnology company advancing biologics development and manufacturing through integrated optogenetics-enabled solutions delivering breakthrough yields, superior on-target quality, and precise process control, today announced a partnership to scale Prolific's platform from early development through GMP production. Both companies are headquartered in Emeryville in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Prolific's technology uses light to control protein expression in engineered cell lines, enabling substantial gains in productivity and product quality. The platform combines optogenetics-enabled cell lines, illumination systems compatible with standard bioreactors, AI-driven process optimization, and advanced analytics. The technology is particularly useful for difficult-to-express proteins including multi-specific antibodies, fusion proteins, cytokines and other complex modalities. Prolific has reported a record-breaking productivity milestone of 21 g/L in a 15-day intensified fed-batch CHO run for a monoclonal antibody (mAb) at small scale, along with up to three-fold titer increases for other complex formats.
Under the agreement, Zylidac Bio will first complete a tech transfer of Prolific's process at 50-liter scale to reproduce Prolific's results at the Zylidac site. The companies plan to subsequently scale client programs to 250 liters, and into GMP manufacturing scale. Prolific's illumination hardware will work seamlessly with Zylidac's existing bioreactors, eliminating the need for customers to build new manufacturing infrastructure.
After demonstrating success at development scale with industry-leading yields across mAbs and difficult-to-express proteins, the next step is scaling the technology to GMP production for clinical and commercial supply. We are very pleased to partner with Zylidac, with a proven team and a great new facility in immediate proximity to our labs in Emeryville. Our science and production teams can work on the same program in the same week, and our clients get a manufacturing partner that already knows the technology."
Deniz Kent, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Prolific Machines
The partnership creates an end-to-end development and manufacturing pathway for Prolific's clients, spanning early development through commercial-scale supply. Programs can start with cell line development at Prolific and move seamlessly a short distance to Zylidac for scale-up, drug substance and drug product manufacturing, fill-finish, and packaging.
"Our teams visited each other's labs early on, and it was clear the capabilities were highly complementary," said Steve Lavezoli, Chief Commercial Officer of Zylidac. "Prolific focuses on early-stage cell line development work, while we offer the process development, scale-up and GMP capacity required for later stages, including programs based on new expression technology like Prolific's. We built our Emeryville site to take a molecule from cell line to finished product. We're excited to be the team that takes this technology to production scale."