We had an objective in 2025 to demonstrate that our platform could develop processes for meaningful products faster and more efficiently than conventional approaches. For this objective, we chose to develop a cell-free method for producing N-trans-Caffeoyltyramine - or more easily named: NCT. NCT is a clinically relevant ingredient for metabolic health, but its development has been constrained. Due to industry's inability to generate cost-effective and high-quality supply. An important milestone for declaring success is to demonstrate our ability to transfer our NCT process to another partner, and see them replicate our lab-scale performance at their larger pilot scale. Once we set up the 100-liter reaction, the main focus was to make sure that things proceeded in a similar fashion to the small-scale. Right away, we started to see a little bit of a lower pH, and some precipitation of the starting materials in the aqueous solution. So, we had direct communication with eXoZymes, and we were providing them some pictures of what we were seeing, and we had a conversation, and we were assured that the enzyme should work just fine in those conditions. So, once we had the 100-liter reaction up and running, the first two time courses had us at or above the conversion rate that we were on the small-scale test run. At that point, the reaction was set to go overnight. So, the 20-hour time course, roughly, was the last time course before you usually quench and move into the workup. We didn't know if that was going to be the case on such a 100-fold, a large scale up on 100-fold. So, the first sample that we took, the analysis that we got, showed over a 99% conversion rate. There was some concern from my end because I thought that that maybe was a little bit too high. The reaction actually produces such a high titer that the organic compound that's made, the NCT, crashes out of aqueous solution. So, what we decided to do was take a second sample and make sure that we were sampling from different places so that we could see if it maintained a similar conversion rate. And we were a little surprised to find out that we actually did achieve this 99% conversion in our first 100-fold scale up of their process. That was very much an aha moment for us. Cayman Chemical was able to quickly adapt our process methods to their pilot operation and demonstrated a 99% reaction conversion and a 90% isolated yield. One of the biggest challenges of conventional technologies is the long timelines to advance through scale up. These technologies generally produce unwanted by -products or leave behind unreacted raw material. Scaling up to process scale with multi-step organic synthesis can be fairly complicated and often it results in really long lead times. In this particular instance, the lack of chromatography and of multi-stage synthesis meant that we actually were able to move from 1-liter scale to 100-liter scale in a matter of a couple of days. So my expectations for the large-scale run was based in some of my experience with enzymatic chemistry that we'd done before. Enzymes can be pretty finicky and if you don't provide them just the right conditions, what works on one scale in one batch can not work at all the next time. So when we moved from the 1-liter scale up to the 100-liter scale, my expectations were just that we got it to work. When we reached the end of that and we had achieved this 99% conversion, I was really surprised and really pleased with the robustness of the enzyme. The protocol that was transferred to us seems like it would work in a variety of conditions. Getting to pilot scale quickly has the added benefit of generating learnings to further improve performance and robustness. This marches us closer towards manufacturing readiness with a process that will perform to expectation. This tech transfer moment with Cayman Chemical and seeing them operate our process with such proficiency is a landmark moment for eXoZymes. We have shown we can enable others to operate with our technology. My experience with enzymatic biocatalysis up to this point usually involves utilizing cell lysates or recombinant proteins that we produced. I was really happy with the robustness of the enzyme provided by exozymes because it seemed to have such a high conversion rate without really needing all of these specific conditions that we use for cell lysates and recombinant proteins. So I've been thinking about this process that was transferred to us from eXoZymes. The cell-free biocatalysis is intriguing because there are industries that could probably benefit from this type of technology. The first one that comes to mind is the production of medicines. Some medicines can be very complicated to synthesize through multi-stage organic synthesis. And often times what happens is you're required to isolate a particular isomer or an enantiomer or do a low yielding transformation. And in the end that becomes a less desirable target because of the yield of the synthesis. Even though the therapeutic itself might be very active. I think if we had an enzyme that could produce some of those types of molecules in high yield we might be able to achieve some targets that would otherwise be overlooked because of those challenges. Other industries like nutraceuticals and or cosmetics are another industries that come to my mind because in those particular industries you need really large volumes of the final product. And producing those generate a lot of toxic waste in normal multi-stage organic synthesis. If instead we're able to produce those through shorter routes with enzymes in an aqueous solution I think that industry would stand to become a lot more green. And the benefits from that aren't just environmental but also to the end user because a lack of toxic ingredients means a safer final product. This was successfully achieved at the end of last year with Cayman Chemical demonstrating both transferability as well as our process robustness. This project reached pilot scale in less than 12 months proving we can move R&D at disruptive speed. So our first foray into cell free biocatalysis following the protocol that exozymes provided us has some pretty significant differences from multi-stage organic synthesis. Large scale ups of multi-stage organic synthesis involve large volumes of solvent, sometimes toxic reagents, and chromatography that can take a long time to isolate one particular product that's produced among many. Enzymes are great tools and the tool that was provided to us from exozymes really produced a very high purity and concentration of the product that we aim to produce in aqueous solution which made it quite simple to isolate. We're excited. We have over half a kilogram of highly pure NCT back here in the lab. We're in a good position with this material to start generating formulation prototypes and to engage in further clinical development. We are inviting partners to come and work with us on commercializing this meaningful ingredient for human health and wellness.