National Science Foundation Awards Nearly $2M to UCLA for Cell-Free Biomanufacturing Initiative

The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.9 million to the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering as part of a major $7.5 million national initiative to develop more sustainable and efficient chemical manufacturing. Samanvaya Srivastava, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, serves as one of the project’s co-principal investigators.

Originated from NSF’s Ideas Lab workshop, which convened 37 participants from industry and academia to accelerate cell-free system adoption and promote U.S. bioeconomy growth, this three-year project focuses on developing a novel cell-free biomanufacturing process that uses custom-designed enzymes and innovative materials to organize and amplify enzyme-catalyzed chemical reactions outside of living cells. This method is designed to simplify scaling and reduce costs while enabling environmentally friendly production of valuable organic chemicals, such as chiral amines — essential building blocks traditionally made through processes that generate significant waste and pollution.

The overall project lead is Han Li, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Irvine, with three co-principal investigators from academia and industry, including Srivastava, collaborators at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and an industry partner, Cascade Bio.

Srivastava, who leads a research group at UCLA Samueli that studies the self-assembly of soft materials, is developing synthetic coacervate systems — membraneless compartments inspired by biological cells — that spatially organize enzymes and cofactors to enable efficient multi-enzyme cascades in a single, cell-free environment. This precise control of chemical reactions is critical to producing chiral amines and alcohols, key ingredients in pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals.

“At UCLA, we’re designing material platforms that reintroduce spatial organization into cell-free systems, enabling chemical processes previously impossible outside living organisms,” Srivastava said. “This approach can unlock faster, cleaner and more cost-effective pathways for producing high-value molecules.”

Beyond its technical goals, the initiative focuses on workforce development and industry collaboration, training students in advanced biomanufacturing and facilitating the translation of academic research into scalable commercial solutions. The technology has spun out into a startup, Praio, currently in an incubator program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.