Project Profile: The Labs (Evozyne)

Facility name: The Labs, Chicago, IL

Size: 30,000 sq. ft. 

Project team: Cannon Design, Skender (design and buildout of the Evozyne space)

Completion date: anticipated early 2021

Founded by Paragon Biosciences in 2019, Evozyne is a Chicago-based data-driven molecular engineering company seeking to solve many of today’s societal challenges through technology. The newly acquired space in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood features a high-tech, fully integrated wet lab. Commercial demand for Evozyne’s technology facilitated the move and is part of a growing life science hub driven by Paragon. Evozyne has already attracted top scientific talent from across the country and plans to add hundreds of jobs in the near future.

Evozyne combines breakthroughs in computational modeling, artificial intelligence, and machine learning with science that is informed by the laws of nature to create novel, uniquely functioning synthetic proteins with new precision and efficiency. Developing synthetic proteins at scales necessary to address global needs represents a major advance in life science and materials research with profound implications for many key industries including agricultural, biopharmaceutical, and environmental. Applying this technology, Evozyne can create novel proteins to address fundamental challenges such as climate change and clean energy by creating a biological hydrogen fuel cell by splitting water, building a synthetic enzyme that converts carbon to energy, and developing a bio-based battery. A recent publication in the peer-review journal Science demonstrated the foundation of Evozyne’s evolution-based, data-driven engineering process for building artificial functional enzymes.