Evonetix Appoints Colin McCracken as Chief Executive Officer

Cambridge, UK, 13 June 2022:

 

EVONETIX LTD (‘Evonetix’), the synthetic biology company bringing semiconductor technology to DNA synthesis, today announced the appointment of Colin McCracken as Chief Executive Officer with immediate effect. Colin’s appointment will support the next phase of the Company’s development and the commercialisation of its semiconductor-based DNA synthesis platform.

 

Colin brings over 20 years’ experience in commercial and business development roles. Prior to joining Evonetix he was Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Fluidigm Corp, where he was responsible for leading all commercial activities, driving revenue growth, and expanding the Company’s global reach. He has delivered commercial success in numerous leadership positions, including Vice President and General Manager and Vice President of Sales at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Vice President and Head of European Sales at Life Technologies and National Sales Manager at Qiagen.

 

As CEO of Evonetix, Colin will focus on building strategic partnerships and customer relationships, ahead of the commercial introduction of the Company’s first product, a benchtop DNA printer. The announcement comes as Evonetix continues to strengthen its senior leadership team, following the recent appointment of Paul Beastall as Chair, as the Company enters the next phase of its development, moving from pure research and development into product commercialisation.

 

Colin McCracken, Chief Executive Officer at Evonetix, commented: “The team at Evonetix has achieved major milestones in building the technology to enable semiconductor based decentralised DNA synthesis. The Company’s technology has the potential to revolutionise synthetic biology, overcoming the limitations of centralised supply by making rapid synthesis of complex DNA libraries and genes routine in every lab. It is an honour to join Evonetix at this pivotal point in their development and I’m looking forward to working with the team to execute our vision and commercial strategy.”

 

Dr Matthew Hayes, Chief Technology Officer and Founder at Evonetix, commented: “We have engaged in an extensive and detailed search to find the right person to lead Evonetix into our next phase of development. Colin has impressed us with both his commercial knowledge and ability to relate to the leadership team and wider organisation. We are all looking forward to working with him and continuing to build Evonetix’s future.” 

 

Paul Beastall, Chair of the Board at Evonetix, commented: “Not only does Colin bring immense experience in building commercial organisations and executing on business plans, he is also a creative and passionate team player, skilled in developing relationships and getting the most out of any organisation he works with. The Board is thrilled to have him join Evonetix, and we are confident that his expertise and drive will allow us to deliver on the immense potential of Evonetix’s synthesis platform. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Matthew Hayes for his dedicated work as interim Chief Executive Officer, ensuring the smooth day-to-day running of the business. He will resume his role as Chief Technology Officer with the Company following a transition to Colin."  

 

Evonetix is reimagining biology by developing a radically different approach to gene synthesis – a highly parallel desktop platform to synthesise DNA at unprecedented accuracy and scale. The technology builds on scalability and density from the semiconductor industry to deliver a step-change in performance for the production of DNA. The company’s platform will place DNA synthesis in the hands of every researcher and change how DNA is accessed, made and used. This new paradigm in gene synthesis will facilitate and enable the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology.

The proprietary Evonetix approach utilises a silicon chip, made by MEMS processing, that integrates physics with biology, and controls the synthesis of DNA at many thousands of independently controlled reaction sites or ‘pixels’ on the chip surface in a highly parallel fashion. The approach is compatible with both chemical and enzymatic DNA synthesis. Following synthesis, strands are assembled on-chip into double-stranded DNA in a process that identifies and removes errors, providing accuracy that is several orders of magnitude better than the conventional approach.

The Evonetix DNA writer will be a desktop device, available to every researcher, and providing scalable, accurate DNA synthesis to enable biological systems to be engineered with unprecedented accuracy and scale – this is third-generation DNA synthesis.