Shares of eXoZymes Inc (NASDAQ:EXOZ) climbed 3.9% in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the company said it received a formal Notice of Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for a Phase IIB Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant totaling $2,028,518.
The NIH-funded program is scheduled to start on July 1, 2026, and will support eXoZymes’ efforts to produce rare cannabinoids and to engineer a broader range of cannabinoid analogs. The award is structured with $1,034,289 allocated for the initial budget period and $994,229 earmarked for the second year, with the second-year payment contingent on continued program progress and the availability of funds.
With this grant, eXoZymes said total non-dilutive funding awarded to the company now stands at $19.7 million. The company described three central objectives under the SBIR program:
- Advanced development of expression systems for cannabinoid cyclase enzymes that are critical to biosynthetic pathways.
- Strategic expansion of the analog repertoire the company can produce, increasing the range of compounds accessible through its platform.
- Preclinical evaluation of eXoZymes’ existing cannabinoid library using receptor-binding assays to characterize activity.
eXoZymes noted that this effort represents the second biosolution in its reported pipeline following NCT, which the company says is advancing toward partnership and commercialization. The company’s technology is a cell-free platform designed to synthesize rare cannabinoids outside of living cells at high purity.
The announcement referenced market projections for U.S. minor cannabinoids, noting an expected increase from roughly $11.5 billion in 2023 to $33.3 billion by 2030, which corresponds to an approximate compound annual growth rate of 15%.
Dr. Tyler Korman, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of eXoZymes, will serve as Principal Investigator for the NIH-funded project. The program also includes a sub-award to the laboratory of Dr. Vikram Shende at Occidental College.
Investors reacted in after-hours trading, where the company’s shares rose 3.9% in the immediate session following the announcement. The structure of the grant - including the conditional second-year funding - and the preclinical nature of the planned evaluations highlight both near-term support for R&D and remaining development milestones that will determine the program’s trajectory.