# Novel ultra-stable enzymes and methods for proteomics

> **NIH NIH R44** · CINDER BIOLOGICAL, INC. · 2020 · $922,905

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
 The highly technical and rapidly advancing field of modern proteomics relies heavily on enzyme
technologies that were established over one hundred and fifty years ago, namely trypsin. We propose
to apply our entirely novel ultra-stable Archaeal proteases to make superior front-end digestion
products for proteomics. Our patented technologies allow efficient production of ultra-stable enzymes
with optima near the boiling point of water at highly acidic pH with half-lives on the order of weeks, not
hours. The hot-acid conditions of CinderBio enzymatic digest reactions denatures target proteins and
allows faster and more effective target digestion without added chaotropes like urea. Our
hyperthermoacidic enzymes generate protein coverage and protein identification metrics that are
competitive with overnight trypsin/urea digests with less sample, fewer steps, and five-minute reaction
times. Here we propose to build on over a decade of our work with these enzyme systems to
commercialize proteomic digestion products with novel capabilities and cleavage specificities to
empower proteomic research. We have established academic and corporate partnerships to facilitate
this work to expedite product development and deployment of our novel capabilities into the proteomics
markets within the next two years. With the astonishing rate of technical advances in proteomics it is
remarkable that front-end enzymatic digests have changed very little since the beginning of the field.
Here we propose to bring to market novel enzyme products and capabilities to advance proteomic
capabilities, reproducibility, and throughput with our efficient proteomic digestion products.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10010437
- **Project number:** 2R44GM128540-02
- **Recipient organization:** CINDER BIOLOGICAL, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** JILL O FUSS
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $922,905
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2018-07-01 → 2022-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10010437

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10010437, Novel ultra-stable enzymes and methods for proteomics (2R44GM128540-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10010437. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*