Meet Caravel: Pioneering a New Era of Biotechnology with the First Unified Platform for Protein Discovery and Delivery

Backed by a $7.8M award from the National Science Foundation, Caravel unlocks
breakthroughs across animal health, biochemical manufacturing, and beyond.

PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Caravel Bio, the first joint platform for protein discovery and delivery that enables new applications of synthetic biology, today announces its selection for a $7.8 million 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.

Until now, protein engineering has been widely limited to the 20 canonical amino acids. Although nature—and modern chemistry—offer hundreds of additional non-canonical amino acids that could unlock superior protein performance, bioengineers have lacked the laboratory methods and technology to fully harness their potential. Caravel’s pioneering approach combines cell-free protein synthesis and bacterial spore display to overcome this barrier, enabling the creation of both novel protein chemistries and the machine learning training data needed to understand and predict them.

Solving Longstanding Industry Bottlenecks
Caravel transforms synthetic biology by unifying every phase of the protein discovery and delivery process into a single, end-to-end platform. Historically, the industry has treated these as separate challenges handled by different tools, teams, and institutions. That fragmentation has driven up costs, limited real-world applications, and kept many protein breakthroughs confined to academic labs.

Beyond its integrated approach, the company’s technology is novel because of how it combines cell-free protein synthesis and bacterial spore display to accelerate a critical biomolecular engineering process called cell-free directed evolution.

“Think of cell-free protein synthesis like building with Legos. You can mix and match biological parts to create entirely new, more powerful proteins. But until now, you could only build and test one combination at a time,” said Trevor Nicks, PhD, Founder and CEO of Caravel. “Caravel changes the game. We make it possible for engineers to build and test millions of cell-free systems in parallel, unlocking the scale needed to train machine learning models that will make the entire process smarter and faster.”

Bacterial spores—one of the most stable forms of life on earth—further extend Caravel’s impact beyond laboratory testing. These biological particles function as highly efficient protein delivery vehicles, such as carrying enzymes inside a bioreactor or as a protein-based vaccine.

While academic researchers have recognized this potential for years, the practical implementation has been limited by scalability and control challenges, confining the technology to laboratory settings. Caravel’s innovations will allow engineers to efficiently create engineered spores at commercial scale, finally enabling the transition of these powerful biological systems from research institutes to real-world applications.

Company Vision & Momentum
Caravel’s mission is to enable people and animals to live longer, healthier lives by expanding the role of biology as a transformative industrial force. The funding will support critical R&D efforts for Caravel to create and scale first-in-class products in three distinct markets:

• DNA synthesis: Caravel and its collaborators will develop a protein to reduce the cost of DNA synthesis, facilitating the development of new cancer therapies, the engineering of microbes for chemical manufacturing, and the production of biomaterials at scale.
• Animal health: Caravel unlocks protein-based vaccines for animals that are easier to store, transport, and produce at scale—opening rapid responses to emerging diseases and reducing farmer losses. This grant supports the development of vaccines for challenging pathogens, such as avian influenza in dairy cattle.
• Non-pollutive chemical manufacturing: Caravel will engineer new enzymes and processes for low-cost, low-energy chemical manufacturing, reducing pollution while supporting industrial growth and potentially onshoring manufacturing jobs.

Multi-Institutional Collaboration
Caravel will directly receive $2.2 million of the NSF grant to lead a three-year project in collaboration with fellow grant recipients Avery Bio, Caltech, Rutgers University, and Oregon State University, alongside additional strategic partners:

• Avery Bio: This San Diego startup, spun out of the J. Craig Venter Institute, brings expertise in DNA synthesis technologies and has developed a microfluidics platform that enables massive parallelization of biochemical reactions.
• Professor Kaihang Wang (Caltech): A leader in synthetic biology, DNA synthesis, and genetic code expansion technologies who will contribute to the design and testing of cell-free systems for building new proteins.
• Professor Ryan Mehl (Oregon State University): An expert in synthetic biology and genetic code expansion who will work on the design and testing of cell-free systems for protein development.
• Professor Yalin Li (Rutgers University): A specialist in technoeconomic analysis who will help identify major cost-drivers for intended products, creating clear research goals that drive down costs and enable commercially viable products and processes.
• Rubi Laboratories: This carbon-negative textile manufacturer will test Caravel’s new enzymes in real-world applications.
• vHive Animal Health Incubator: Caravel joined this University of Surrey program, supported by Zoetis, as a remote member in June 2025, furthering its connections in the animal health sector.
• Advisors: Kevin Gray, PhD, advises the company on biochemical manufacturing strategy. Oscar Mendoza, Ph.D., and Eve Hanks, PhD, advise the company on animal health strategy.

In addition to the new NSF grant, the company has raised a $1.9M pre-seed round from 2048.vc, The Venture Collective (TVC), Pioneer Fund, and Portland Seed Fund, and secured a $275k Phase I NSF SBIR grant.

Caravel’s technology is rooted in research originally funded by the Department of Energy and conducted by the company’s founder and CEO, Trevor Nicks, PhD, at Tufts University.

ABOUT CARAVEL BIO
Caravel is the first joint platform for protein discovery and delivery on a mission to expand the role of biology as a transformative industrial force. The company’s technology uses new laboratory methods and machine learning to accelerate cell-free directed evolution—a critical biomolecular engineering process—to overcome longstanding industry bottlenecks and enable the creation of novel, scalable protein technologies. Caravel was selected for a $7.8M National Science Foundation grant in 2025 in collaboration with Avery Bio, Caltech, Rutgers University, and Oregon State University to create and scale first-in-class products across DNA synthesis, animal health, and non-pollutive chemical manufacturing. Learn more at www.Caravel.bio.

Media Contact:
Tess Pawlisch
608-333-9788
caravel@needlepr.com 

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SOURCE Caravel Bio