Evonetix and Analog Devices Collaborate on Third-Generation DNA Synthesis Platform

• Collaboration will fast track the development and scale-up of Evonetix’s desktop DNA writer towards commercialisation and first product
• Technology will help facilitate the rapidly growing multibillion-dollar synthetic biology industry

EVONETIX LTD (‘Evonetix’), the synthetic biology company developing a desktop platform for scalable, high-fidelity and rapid gene synthesis, today announced a collaboration with leading, global high-performance analog technology company, Analog Devices, Inc. The companies will work together on the advancement and commercial scale-up of Evonetix’s proprietary microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based silicon chips and accelerate the development of Evonetix’s first product, a DNA desktop writer.  

Evonetix’s novel silicon chip controls the synthesis of DNA at many thousands of independently controlled reaction sites or ‘pixels’ on the chip surface in a highly parallel fashion. The two companies began working together in January 2019. They agreed to extend the collaboration as Evonetix continues to work with Analog Garage, Analog Devices’ corporate innovation lab, to jointly develop an integrated solution which includes the MEMS platform, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) to miniaturise the control electronics, and flow cell. Analog Devices will assist with the commercial scale-up of the technology, and manufacture devices for the desktop DNA writers.

The opportunities available to synthetic biology in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and drug discovery, industrial biotech, specialty chemicals, renewables, agriculture and materials science are currently being held back by the ability to create de novo high-fidelity DNA at scale. Evonetix’s DNA synthesis technology, which will be sold to laboratories as a ‘plug and play’ desktop instrument, will synthesise DNA at unprecedented accuracy, scale and speed, accelerating scientists’ ability to use biology on a scale not currently possible and influencing a large impact on global health.

Dr Matthew Hayes, Chief Technology Officer at Evonetix, said: “Collaborating with Analog Devices is a significant step forward in our mission to develop a highly parallel desktop platform to accurately synthesise DNA at scale. The support and expertise of the Analog Garage R&D team has been invaluable in helping us design a complex control ASIC and we now look forward to expanding our collaboration to achieve the commercial scale-up of our platform.”

Pat O’Doherty, Senior Vice President of Digital Healthcare at Analog Devices, added: “Evonetix is a pioneer in reimagining biology and developing a radically different approach to synthesising long-chain DNA at unprecedented accuracy and scale. This collaboration provides Analog Devices with an opportunity to enter the growing synthetic biology market. Our work together is aimed at increasing the speed and reducing the cost of gene assembly to provide novel strategies that can be used to produce affordable medications and treat a wide range of diseases globally.”

For more information about Evonetix, please visit: www.evonetix.com.

To learn more about Analog Devices and the Analog Garage, please visit: https://www.analog.com/en/landing-pages/001/analog-garage.html

About Evonetix Ltd

Evonetix is reimagining biology by developing a radically different approach to gene synthesis – a highly parallel desktop platform to synthesise DNA at unprecedented accuracy and scale. The company’s platform will place DNA synthesis in the hands of every researcher and change how DNA is accessed, made and used. This new paradigm in gene synthesis will facilitate and enable the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology.

The proprietary Evonetix approach utilises a silicon chip, made by MEMS processing, that integrates physics with biology, and controls the synthesis of DNA at many thousands of independently controlled reaction sites or ‘pixels’ on the chip surface in a highly parallel fashion. The approach is compatible with both chemical and enzymatic DNA synthesis. Following synthesis, strands are assembled on-chip into double-stranded DNA in a process that identifies and removes errors, providing accuracy that is several orders of magnitude better than the conventional approach.

The Evonetix DNA writer will be a desktop device, available to every researcher, and providing scalable, accurate DNA synthesis to enable biological systems to be engineered with unprecedented accuracy and scale – this is third-generation DNA synthesis.

For further information, see www.evonetix.com

About Analog Garage

Analog Garage helps turn disruptive ideas into tomorrow’s realities, providing entrepreneurs with a path to propose, explore, and scale new technologies and business models. The incubator partners, mentors, and finances entrepreneurs with ideas that solve hard problems in the real world; the noisy, the messy, the difficult: the analog world.

About synthetic biology

With the huge increase in DNA sequence information available to mankind over the past ten years, there now exists an unprecedented opportunity to, for example, engineer metabolic pathways and organisms, improve industrial processes, create new processes and engineer genomes with new or improved traits. This opportunity, known as synthetic biology, is estimated to grow rapidly over the coming years, reaching $40 billion in value in the mid-2020s. Synthetic biology will have a massive impact across many industries and will be fundamental to helping us manage the Earth’s resources.

However, only a highly disruptive technology is likely to achieve the significant improvements in DNA synthesis required to enable and facilitate these opportunities. Evonetix believes that, by providing high-fidelity DNA at scale, without the need for post-synthesis error correction, it will be well placed to capture a significant part of the growing multibillion-dollar synthetic biology opportunity.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, our statements regarding the expected opportunities, benefits and developments associated with the collaboration between Analog Devices, Inc. and Evonetix Ltd, including the anticipated advancements in technologies, solutions and product development efforts and offerings, that are based on current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates, forecasts, and projections about the industry and markets in which the companies operate. The statements contained in this release are not guarantees of future performance, are inherently uncertain, and involve certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed in such forward-looking statements, and such statements should not be relied upon as representing Analog Devices‘ or Evonetix’s expectations or beliefs as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results described, implied or projected in any forward-looking statements include difficulty or delay in the design, development, production and marketing of products, technologies and solutions, including those associated with the collaboration between Analog Devices and Evonetix, the course, impacts and uncertainty of the COVID-19 global pandemic, and other risk factors described in the most recent filings of Analog Devices with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Analog Devices does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements made by it.