PROTEIN STRUCTURES
Proteins are key building blocks and fulfill many essential roles within all living organisms. They are involved in processes such as immunity, metabolism, perception, etc. As many diseases are the result of malfunctioning proteins, understanding what they look like and how they work is essential to develop better therapeutic treatments. Obtaining a blueprint of a protein at the atomic level is a very tedious process that requires specific experimental methods such as cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM).
OUR MISSION
PUXANO’s mission is to accelerate structure-based protein research across all fields and industries by using a combination of bio-, nano- and computational technologies. By aiming to eliminate the trial-and-error process of standard structural biology research, PUXANO can help anyone engaging in protein research to obtain access to their specific protein target.
OUR OBJECTIVE IS NOT TO SOLELY DETERMINE ONE SINGLE PROTEIN STRUCTURE, BUT TO BUILD A PLATFORM WHICH ENABLES OUR CUSTOMERS TO RESOLVE THEIR NEXT TEN STRUCTURES TEN TIMES FASTER
START-UP
PUXANO was founded by Wouter Van Putte in May 2021, together with Sam Detry and Marie-Aline Mattelin. In search for the ideal location to innovate, grow and succeed, PUXANO chose the BlueChem incubator in Antwerp, the first incubator for sustainable chemistry in Belgium, from where they develop new technologies and provide services for cryo-EM.
SERVICES AND TECHNOLOGIES
PUXANO is a platform-based biotech company focusing on streamlining the overall workflow of structural biology. This includes protein construct design, expression, purification, binding studies, quality control and structure determination by cryo-EM. Our platform of innovative nanotechnology, biotechnology and computational tools enables us to overcome bottlenecks such as low protein yields and sample volumes, and reduces the time, effort and resources normally spent in protein research
WE COMBINE THE BEST OF BIO-, NANO-, AND COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY TO STREAMLINE THE ENTIRE STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY PIPELINE FROM SEQUENCE TO STRUCTURE
PARTNERS
Our customers are mainly pharma and biotech companies in the EU, UK and US, which can benefit from structural models of their protein targets or scaffolds during drug development. While PUXANO can provide straightforward services like other contract research organizations (CROs), PUXANO strives to be a partner that can address throughput bottlenecks or resolve problems where standard protocols fail. Our aim is to establish long-term partnerships with our customers, whereby we become part of their R&D environment and provide them access to our constantly improving platform. The objective is not to solely resolve one single protein structure. It is enabling our customers to resolve their next ten structures ten times faster by finetuning our platform to their specific protein target class.
USING OUR TECHNOLOGIES, WE CAN DRASTICALLY REDUCE TIME AND RESOURCES OTHERWISE WASTED ON ENDLESS CYCLES OF TRIAL-AND-ERROR
THE FUTURE OF PUXANO
PUXANO is a tech-oriented company where continuous innovation is key. Our interdisciplinary team of structural biologists, nanoengineers and bioinformaticians are always developing as well as tracking novel tools and technologies that can accelerate structure-based protein research.
Our current future trajectories focus on combining miniaturization and parallelization in experimental structural biology using nano- and biotechnology tools with artificial intelligence solutions for protein
structure prediction. Next to therapeutics, the role of proteins will only expand in the coming years as there is a whole realm of other important domains such as sustainable chemistry, food production and waste processing where proteins and structure-based protein research can play an important role.
PUXANO strives to play a central role in this transition.
