Praio Launches Environment Screening Panel at SynBioBeta 2026

San Jose, CA, May 6, 2026 — Praio today announced the launch of its first commercial offering, the Praio Environment Screening Panel, at SynBioBeta 2026 in San Jose. The panel is already in the hands of biocatalysis teams and enzyme developers.

The offering is built on a core insight: enzyme performance is a function of its environment. Rather than redesigning enzymes, Praio designs the environment around them. The screening panel gives teams access to 15 distinct artificial protocell environments, providing an orthogonal lever to improve enzyme rate, yield, stability, and reuse — while being designed for straightforward integration into existing biocatalysis workflows.

The panel is Praio’s first commercial step toward making artificial protocells directly accessible to real biocatalysis and biomanufacturing workflows. By enabling teams to rapidly screen how enzyme performance changes across distinct protocell microenvironments, Praio aims to give biocatalysis teams a new way to improve existing enzymes without beginning with enzyme redesign.

“This launch is about making artificial protocells real for biocatalysis teams. Some of the hardest challenges in industrial biocatalysis are functional and processing challenges: improving rate, stability, reuse, and compatibility with real manufacturing conditions. Nature solves these problems by organizing chemistry inside structured cellular environments. At Praio, we are translating that principle into a practical platform for next-generation biocatalysis. The Environment Screening Panel is our first commercial step toward advanced biorefineries powered by protocellular biocatalysis.”
— Advait Holkar, Founder and CEO of Praio

The panel is the result of years of foundational research and multiple iterations of product-market fit. Praio was supported by Activate’s Berkeley Fellowship, Cyclotron Road, the Ray of Hope Accelerator at The Biomimicry Institute, BioPACIFIC MIP, and Safar Partners.

About Praio

Praio is developing artificial protocells to improve enzyme performance for biocatalysis and biomanufacturing. Built from commercially available polymers, Praio’s protocell environments create simplified, cell-like microenvironments around enzymes to improve rate, yield, stability, reuse, and compatibility with challenging reaction conditions. The company’s first commercial offering, the Praio Environment Screening Panel, gives biocatalysis teams a practical way to screen how their existing enzymes perform across distinct protocell environments without beginning with enzyme redesign. Praio’s long-term vision is to enable advanced biorefineries powered by intensified protocellular biocatalysis. Praio was founded by Advait Holkar, PhD in Chemical Engineering from UCLA, based on research from the Srivastava Lab at UCLA. Learn more at www.praio.co.