LIDo student's biotech startup joins the UCL Hatchery

Toby Allington (2023 cohort, Royal Holloway) co-founded Enlyven, an early-stage biotech developing encapsulated enzyme delivery for the human gut, with fellow PhD student Louis Samuel. The first application uses a novel alliinase to generate allicin in situ in the small intestine, solving a delivery problem that has limited the compound's use for decades. The pair won the Science & Technology Award at the Aberystwyth University Student StartUp Competition in 2025, and have since rebranded from Heartguard to Enlyven, narrowing focus from a consumer health concept to the underlying enzyme delivery technology. In September 2026 Enlyven was accepted onto the UCL Hatchery incubator following a competitive pitch at BaseKX, adding to a year that also included the 50|50 accelerator run by the deep-tech VC 50 Years, and UCL's Venture Builder and Discovery Spark programmes. Both founders are building the company alongside their PhDs.

Photo below: Toby and Louis at Crops of the Future, a showcase held in September 2026, where we ran a live demonstration of the enzyme chemistry behind the product for an audience of investors, crop scientists and breeders. The poster behind us is deliberately blurred: it carries around three months of unpublished lab work, including data on our novel alliinase, which we can't put into the public domain ahead of filing.