Olon, a global CDMO and generics manufacturer, and Zymvol, a leader in computational enzyme discovery and enzyme-enabled product development, today announced a strategic collaboration designed to accelerate the adoption of biocatalysis as a practical, scalable manufacturing solution for the pharmaceutical industry.
The collaboration brings together Zymvol’s physics-AI powered enzyme design with Olon’s industrial-scale biomanufacturing capabilities, creating an end-to-end pathway from enzyme discovery to ton-scale production. This partnership directly addresses the cost, timeline, and scale-up challenges that have historically limited the widespread industrial adoption of biocatalysis.
Enzyme-enabled manufacturing routes offer a compelling pathway to lower costs, improved sustainability, and more resilient supply chains. The Olon–Zymvol collaboration builds on this potential by combining advanced computational enzyme design with proven large-scale fermentation, process development, and manufacturing expertise, enabling faster development, reduced risk, and reliable translation from laboratory innovation to industrial-scale production.
Under the agreement, Zymvol’s physics-based, AI-enhanced enzyme discovery and optimization platform will support Olon’s customer and proprietary projects. In parallel, Olon will make its extensive fermentation scale-up, process development, and manufacturing infrastructure available for Zymvol’s self-funded and customer-partnered programs.
“Biocatalysis has long been scientifically compelling, but commercial adoption has been held back by uncertainty, long timelines, and scale-up risk,” said Maria Fátima Lucas, CEO and Founder of Zymvol. “Our physics-based, AI-driven approach makes enzyme performance predictable before a project ever reaches the lab. By partnering with Olon, we can translate that digital certainty directly into industrial reality, significantly reducing time, cost, and risk from enzyme discovery to full-scale production.”
From Olon’s perspective, the collaboration strengthens its ability to support customers seeking innovative and reliable manufacturing routes under real-world industrial constraints, while also transferring these benefits to its proprietary products and supporting sustainable development and continuous improvement of its internal pipeline. Sustainability is part of how Olon works every day, shaping decisions and guiding continuous improvement across the company.
“Discovering enzymes is only part of the challenge; the real test is scaling them reliably, efficiently, and on schedule,” said Dr. Ester Masllorens, SVP Global R&D at Olon. “By integrating Zymvol’s predictive enzyme design capabilities with our fermentation, process development, and large-scale manufacturing expertise, we can help customers move from early concepts to ton-scale production with far greater confidence, while applying green chemistry principles to enable more sustainable, low-impact manufacturing processes. This collaboration reinforces Olon’s role as a partner of choice in advanced biomanufacturing”.
The partnership also builds on Olon’s long-standing industrial expertise, including more than 60 years in microbial fermentation, over 30 years in recombinant protein production, and 20 years of know-how in mammalian cell culture. With a total fermentation capacity of approximately 5,000 m³ across a wide range of fermenter sizes, Olon is one of Europe’s largest third-party fermentation providers. Olon operates a robust European biomanufacturing network, anchored by two major bio-hubs in Italy and strengthened by the addition of two French sites acquired in 2024, enhancing its ability to support large-scale biocatalytic manufacturing across Europe.
Together, Zymvol and Olon aim to make enzyme-based manufacturing routes faster to develop, lower risk to scale, and commercially viable as a repeatable solution for pharmaceutical and specialty chemical producers facing increasing pressure on efficiency, sustainability, and supply-chain resilience.
