Ioannis Stasinopoulos - Prozymi Biolabs

What three words best describe your entrepreneurial journey? Resilient, Disruptive, Fulfilling

Founders: Ioannis Stasinopoulos and Andreas Andreou 

Startup: Prozmi Biolabs 

What is the startup?

We develop an enzyme technology that degrades harmful gluten, while retaining its beneficial properties that enable the production of wheat-based gluten safe bread. 

Tell us more

I first met my co-founder, Andreas Andreou, when we were BSc Biology students at the University of Athens, where we became close friends. By pure coincidence, we both later relocated to Scotland to pursue our MSc and subsequent PhD studies at the University of Edinburgh. During COVID pandemic, Andreas approached me and asked if I wanted to start a company with him to advance an idea for gluten-degrading enzymes. A little bit later, Niki Christopoulou joined our team, beautifully completing our core founding team. That's how we started writing the first grant applications, we registered a promising biotech/foodtech company, called Prozymi Biolabs, we initiated our lab operations, and the rest is history!

What motivates you as an entrepreneur?

Before I was approached by my co-founder, Andreas, to start this entrepreneurial journey with him, I had never thought that one day I would become an entrepreneur. My primary motivation was always to give back to society through my biggest passion, science. I always believed that small steps of scientific progression could take our world a step forward and improve our everyday lives. A few years into my entrepreneurial journey, I realise that I still have the exact same motivation as an entrepreneur. For me, entrepreneurship is the most unique way (my own way) to take my passion-driven motivation and bring it from the wet lab to the rest of the world. It is the link that every innovator looks for to make their innovative vision a reality. So, my motivation for being an entrepreneur is to make my vision a reality, or in simpler terms, to bring the smiles back to the faces of millions of gluten-free consumers.

How do you define success?

Becoming a multinational company with worldwide operations and recognition would be objectively impactful and socially defined as successful. It would also definitely make me happy, because it means we would have the chance to take our gluten-safe technology to the world. However, even at this stage, with only three people on our team and a constant everyday struggle to find the necessary resources to operate, I feel that over the last two to three years, we have already achieved various small wins that can be defined as success. Moving from starting a company in a flat to setting up and running R&D operations, all while working to secure funding, has been a tough journey filled with many successful and unsuccessful moments. Ultimately, going to work every day, looking around me, and realising what we have achieved alongside the people sharing this journey with me makes me feel blessed, grateful, and already successful.

What piece of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

Don't give up. Just keep moving forward! (even when taking a step back).

What role has Edinburgh Innovations played in your entrepreneurial journey?

Edinburgh Innovations has played a major role in our development since the very early days of our company. Its supportive and insightful advisors navigated us around the pitfalls that young entrepreneurs so often fall into, becoming our lighthouse in what was rough, uncharted entrepreneurial territory for us. Through their constant support and guidance, Edinburgh Innovations, and, by extension, the University of Edinburgh, has proven to be one of the best companions we could have asked for throughout our journey.

What's next?

Next, we want to secure funding to move forward with our enzyme characterisation and expression, allowing us to gradually scale up production and begin applying them in bread formulation. This will give us the opportunity to test our technology in an industry related environment, taking us a step closer to bringing gluten-safe bread to supermarket shelves. But before we do any of these, what is actually next is a small experiment we have scheduled for tomorrow morning in our small but miraculous lab on the ground floor of the Roslin Innovation Centre. We will be testing our enzymes in small dough samples, optimising a preliminary formulation, and making another small step towards a gluten-safe world full of flavour.