Dr. Kwon earned his Ph.D. in Plant Molecular Biology and his B.S. in Biology from Yonsei University in South Korea. His postdoctoral training took him to the University of Central Florida and then to the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as a Senior Research Scientist in the lab of Professor Henry Daniell — a pioneer in chloroplast transformation technology and oral delivery of biologics.

Over his career, Dr. Kwon has engineered plants, algae, yeast, and cyanobacteria as cost-effective, scalable bioreactor systems capable of producing vaccines, enzymes, hormones, and peptide therapeutics for oral delivery. His research has been published in more than 25 peer-reviewed papers, cited over 1,200 times in the scientific literature, with work appearing in Molecular Therapy, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Biomaterials, and Hypertension.

His contributions have earned major recognition, including the American Heart Association’s Top Basic Science Paper Award and the Nutreco Feed Tech Challenge for his work engineering algal-based oral fish vaccines at Microsynbiotix. He has also served as Chief Scientific Officer at XiliX MaterialBio, where he led chloroplast engineering programs and developed FDA-grade standard operating procedures for oral biologics manufacturing.

At Evolv, Dr. Kwon’s expertise in expression platform optimization, synthetic biology, and codon-optimization algorithms directly enabled the creation of the engineered yeast strain that produces the EV1 Peptide™. He leads the expansion of Evolv’s biomimetic pipeline into new molecules, ensuring that each product meets pharmaceutical-level standards of safety, scalability, and scientific credibility.

He is based in San Francisco, California.

Education
Ph.D., Plant Molecular Biology — Yonsei University; B.S., Biology — Yonsei University

Research Positions
Senior Research Scientist, University of Pennsylvania; Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Central Florida

Specialization
Oral biologics, synthetic biology, chloroplast engineering, yeast expression systems

Co-Inventor
EV1 Peptide™

Prior Roles
CSO, XiliX MaterialBio; CSO, Microsynbiotix Ltd.

Publications
25+ peer-reviewed — Molecular Therapy, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Biomaterials, Hypertension

Citations
1,200+ (Google Scholar)

Awards
AHA Top Basic Science Paper; Nutreco Feed Tech Challenge

Location
San Francisco, CA

Selected peer-reviewed publications from Dr. Kwon's research at the University of Central Florida and the University of Pennsylvania. This work established his foundation in plant molecular biology, chloroplast engineering, and the oral delivery of bioencapsulated therapeutic peptides.

Kwon KC, Nityanandam R, New JS, Daniell H. Oral delivery of bioencapsulated exendin-4 expressed in chloroplasts lowers blood glucose level in mice and stimulates insulin secretion in beta-TC6 cells. Plant Biotechnol J. 2013 Jan;11(1):77–86. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.12008 (PubMed)

Kwon KC, Daniell H. Oral delivery of protein drugs bioencapsulated in plant cells. Mol Ther. 2016 Aug;24(8):1342–50. https://doi.org/10.1038/mt.2016.115 (PubMed)

Kwon KC, Sherman A, Chang WJ, Kamesh A, Biswas M, Herzog RW, Daniell H. Expression and assembly of largest foreign protein in chloroplasts: oral delivery of human FVIII made in lettuce chloroplasts robustly suppresses inhibitor formation in haemophilia A mice. Plant Biotechnol J. 2018 Jun;16(6):1148–1160. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.12859 (PubMed)

Park J, Yan G, Kwon KC, Liu M, Gonnella PA, Yang S, Daniell H. Oral delivery of novel human IGF-1 bioencapsulated in lettuce cells promotes musculoskeletal cell proliferation, differentiation and metabolism. Biomaterials. 2020 Mar;233:119591. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2019.119591 (PubMed)