What You Should Know:
– Caravel Bio, the first joint platform for protein discovery and delivery that enables new applications of synthetic biology, today announces its selection for a $7.8M award from the U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP).
– The award assembles a team of world-class engineers to create tools for building proteins with novel chemistries, train more advanced machine learning models on the resulting datasets, and develop new, innovative products across industries.
Caravel Secures $7.8M NSF Grant to Pioneer a Unified Platform for Protein Discovery and Delivery
Caravel is redefining the landscape of synthetic biology with the first integrated platform for protein discovery and delivery, designed to expand the role of biology as a transformative industrial force. By merging cell-free protein synthesis with bacterial spore display, Caravel enables rapid, scalable cell-free directed evolution—a crucial biomolecular engineering process that breaks through long-standing limitations in protein design.
In 2025, Caravel was awarded a $7.8 million National Science Foundation grant in collaboration with Avery Bio, Caltech, Rutgers University, and Oregon State University. The funding supports the creation of novel proteins that can power advancements across DNA synthesis, animal health, and non-pollutive chemical manufacturing.
Until now, protein engineering has largely relied on just 20 canonical amino acids, despite the existence of hundreds of non-canonical ones that could dramatically enhance protein function. Caravel’s platform finally unlocks this potential by integrating high-throughput synthesis and evolution methods that generate both new protein chemistries and the machine learning data needed to optimize them.
Overcoming Industry Barriers
For decades, the protein engineering process has been fragmented across separate labs, tools, and workflows, inflating costs and limiting scalability. Caravel’s end-to-end system unites all stages—from discovery to delivery—into one cohesive platform. Its dual innovation lies in pairing cell-free synthesis, which enables parallel testing of millions of protein variants, with bacterial spore display, which allows efficient delivery of engineered proteins as enzymes or vaccines.
“Think of cell-free protein synthesis like building with Legos—you can combine biological parts to create new proteins,” explained Trevor Nicks, PhD, Caravel’s founder and CEO. “Until now, scientists could only build and test one design at a time. Caravel changes that by allowing millions of systems to be created and analyzed in parallel, providing the scale needed for true AI-driven bioengineering.”
Bacterial spores, among the most resilient biological forms, also make Caravel’s discoveries practical for industrial use. These spores can safely deliver enzymes in bioreactors or act as stable protein-based vaccines—advances that were previously hindered by scalability and control challenges.
Expanding Biology’s Industrial Reach
Caravel’s mission is to enable people and animals to live longer, healthier lives by advancing biology as a core industrial technology. The NSF funding will drive development in three key domains:
- DNA Synthesis: Developing proteins that reduce synthesis costs and accelerate innovations in cancer therapy, microbial engineering, and biomaterials production.
- Animal Health: Creating thermostable, easily produced protein-based vaccines for livestock, including candidates for avian influenza and dairy cattle diseases.
- Sustainable Manufacturing: Engineering enzymes for clean, low-energy chemical production that cuts pollution and supports domestic manufacturing.
Collaborative, Multi-Institutional Effort
Caravel will receive $2.2M of the NSF funding to lead a three-year initiative with its institutional and industry partners. These include Avery Bio, a microfluidics-focused DNA synthesis company spun out of the J. Craig Venter Institute; Caltech’s Kaihang Wang and Oregon State’s Ryan Mehl, both leaders in genetic code expansion; Rutgers’ Yalin Li, who will conduct technoeconomic analyses; and industry collaborators such as Rubi Laboratories (carbon-negative textiles) and the vHive Animal Health Incubator at the University of Surrey.
Caravel is also supported by strategic advisors including Kevin Gray, PhD (biochemical manufacturing), Oscar Mendoza, PhD, and Eve Hanks, PhD (animal health). Alongside this major NSF grant, the company has raised $1.9M in pre-seed funding from 2048.vc, The Venture Collective, Pioneer Fund, and Portland Seed Fund, as well as a $275k NSF SBIR Phase I award.
Caravel’s foundation lies in research originally supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and conducted by Dr. Nicks at Tufts University. With its unified platform and strong academic partnerships, Caravel is positioned to transform protein science into a powerful driver of industrial innovation and sustainability.
