Why Is The FBI Sourcing Enzymes From Patagonia For Drug Detection?

Kura Biotech is the biggest enzyme-producer you’ve never heard of. They’ve bootstrapped their way to protein engineering prowess all from deep in the heart of South America. Their story shows what’s possible if we break convention and build mission-driven science companies outside of the traditional epicenters of innovation.

In the wake of the pandemic, remote work is in vogue. That was not the case ten years ago. And even today, with more and more companies shirking brick and mortar, biologists are slow to adapt.

Admittedly, lab work cannot occur in a living room. Scientists need physical spaces to work. But they don’t need to be shoulder to shoulder with everyone they work with. Kura Biotech realized this early.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Even before the pandemic, we were convinced that you could be connected to the world without being right in the middle of things,” said Manuel Rozas Chief Scientific Officer and Founder of Kura Biotech when I spoke with him ahead of the SynBioBeta conference. While most would have advised him to go court venture capitalists in The Bay Area and Boston, Rozas turned to a town of 40,000 people in South Chile.

In addition to being his home, Chile had something to offer that it took a Chilean scientist to recognize—a mollusk with a gut instinct about drug abuse.

Red abalone —large, rust-hewed mollusks— dot the coasts of Puerto Varas and are a potent source of an enzyme called Beta Glucoronidase. Beta Glucoronidase, which we’ll call BG for short, is used to detect opioids and other drugs in urine. BG is typically sourced from cattle, but the bovine BG is less effective. Unfortunately, even abalone BG is not very efficient. That’s where Kura Biotech comes in.

ADVERTISEMENT

When a drug is processed by the liver, a little tag is added to make the drug more water soluble, so it can pass out of the body in urine. That tag gets cleaved off by BG, so that the original drug can be detected. The entire process in typical forensic workflows takes between four and sixteen hours.

Rozas and team sought to find a better way. Using a three-fold approach, they engineered versions of the BG enzyme that could process drugs faster, and more efficiently. Their approach incorporated so-called “rational design,” “semi-rational design,” and “directed evolution.”

In rational design, individual changes are made to specific parts of the enzyme that scientists expect will impact how well it works. In semi-rational design, multiple parts of the enzyme are targeted at once. In directed evolution the enzyme is randomly mutated, and mutants with better performance are selected and further evolved.

ADVERTISEMENT

Kura Biotech’s resulting suite of BG enzymes can accomplish almost in minutes what previously took hours. That’s why Kura is now the largest supplier of BG enzymes not only in Chile, but all over the world. Even the FBI uses Kura Biotech enzymes, and with the current opioid crisis, the demand is ever-growing.

But the opioid epidemic isn’t the only public health crisis impacted by Kura Biotech. When the pandemic sent scientists home in 2020, Rozas and team made a plan to get back to work. They developed COVID detection kits based on a technology called RT-LAMP, which is a type of PCR that works faster and cheaper.

ADVERTISEMENT

In 4 months, they developed a test that was used on 4 million people. That’s about 20% of the population of the entire country of Chile.

“We were able to very quickly execute on something with that level of challenge, because of the kind of culture, the kind of people we have here,” said Rozas.

It’s that culture that attracted Shervin Kamkar, VP of Business Development at Kura Biotech. “Their ability to pivot very quickly and put their engineering team to work [on the effort at hand] is really good,” he noted. Kamkar has a pedigree that includes giants like Illumina
ILMN
and Roche. And he doesn’t live in Patagonia.

A self-described genomics geek, Kamkar came on board to lead Kura’s expansion in a new direction. Genomics – our ability to understand and harness the power of DNA—is the key to precision medicine. And enzymes that make, modify, and read DNA are crucial for genomics.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Kura has developed a really powerful platform to modify and improve enzymes,” Kamkar explained. Each enzyme is unique and requires a unique assay to study and improve it. Kura excels at applying a sniper-like focus to a particular enzyme to rapidly develop assays that enable them to test a ton of different features quickly and affordably. Enzymes are also patentable. That means that finding enzymes that give small companies the freedom to operate without having to pay licensing fees takes some creativity.

“Kura is nimble enough and hungry enough to do product development the way we should do it.” And that, according to Kamkar, is by using input from the market about what enzymes are needed. Right now, the market is focused on a DNA-building enzyme called TDT.

ADVERTISEMENT

TDT is sort of a super-builder in that it does not require an existing strand of DNA to copy but can add building blocks to any strand. What makes that so attractive, is that it can be used to build completely novel DNA.

But like BG, the backbone used for most TDT’s typically comes from bovine sources. Kura uses a novel TDT backbone that does not come from bovine or mouse sequences, and is not protected by previous patents. Their enzyme is particularly adept at adding novel building blocks to DNA, which can allow it to perform novel functions. This enzyme will be a launch-pad that can be adapted and customized to suit boutique needs.

At the upcoming SynBioBeta conference in Oakland, Kura is debuting their Excel TDT Partnership Program to find partner companies with such boutique TDT applications. Of their activities at SynBioBeta, Kamkar said, “If you come see us at our booth, we’ll plant a tree in your honor in the burn scars of California.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Very on brand for a certified B Corp that gives 2% of their sales to a foundation to fund employee-led projects for sustainability and support of vulnerable populations.

It should be said that lab work cannot usually occur in a living room. But that’s exactly where Rozas got his start. He started his first successful company out of a lab in his house, and then he bootstrapped Kura Biotech without funding from venture capital. In addition to making waves in forensic drug detection and COVID diagnosis, they used what they learned in COVID assay development to create tests for food safety testing. Now they’ve got their sights set on genomics.

Kura means “rock.” It could be said that they’ve built a foundation for a new kind of biotech company; one that is conceived in a place where people want to live; one that attracts the type of scientist who can think outside of the box and pivot quickly; one that impacts communities beyond Boston and The Bay.

ADVERTISEMENT

A branding agency that interviewed Kura’s people called them “rebels with a cause”.

“We’re not just another biotech company. What we do, how we do it, and where we do it is different,” said Rozas.

That much is evident. And if hiking off the proverbial path for biotech is a rebellion, it’s a noble one – a rebellion that more of the great entrepreneurial minds in science should consider.

Thank you to Jenna Gallegos for additional research and reporting on this article. I’m the founder of SynBioBeta, and some of the companies I write about, including Kura Biotech, are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference. For more content, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter and follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.