Our Delta Variant Safety Measures

Hi ,

This week, we bring you an important letter from SynBioBeta CEO, Frank Tate, a Spaces show building bridges in the Middle East, and a Spotlight on sustainable foods for our favorite fluffy friends and much more!

Thank you to this week’s sponsor, Ginkgo Bioworks, who is building a platform to support the synthetic biology ecosystem and enable customers to program cells as easily as we can program computers. Ginkgo’s platform is helping grow biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals. Check out some of their newest cell programs with Bolt Threads and Aldevron to learn more.

An Open Letter from SynBioBeta CEO

Dear 2021 SynBioBeta Conference Participants,

We hope this email finds you, your loved ones, and your colleagues all well.

It’s an understatement to say that we are living in challenging, unprecedented times. SynBioBeta recognizes the unique demands placed upon us as a science-based organization doing business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Having worked in the entertainment industry for over 35 years, crowd safety has always been a driving force behind every decision made, as profitability must never be allowed to supersede the welfare of its participants, attendees, or staff.

With all the negative news that has surfaced over the past few weeks (Delta resurgence, UN Climate Report, wildfires worldwide), we truly believe that there’s never been a greater need for the synthetic biology community to come together, celebrate the amazing progress made over the past 18 months, and collaborate on game-changing solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.

We contend that solid science, when underpinned by selfless motives, will be able to develop, produce, and distribute services and products to help solve these problems and that the beginning of so many breakthroughs start at in-person conferences.

So, in moving forward, please know that we at SynBioBeta are doing everything in our power to produce a safe, productive, and fun industry reunion. We’ve spent the last several weeks vetting the feasibility of hosting a live conference in October or if we should postpone the live event until the variant is under control. We are discussing the situation with experts, comparing notes with city/state officials, and then based upon our research, we will make an informed final decision.

Important to note: As of today, we intend to move forward with the live conference on Oct. 4-6 and would implement a “safety first” protocol requiring proof of vaccination, a negative COVID test within 72 hours of onsite attendance, and would honor all state/ local guidelines regarding mask mandates. We will provide an update by next Friday (August 27) informing you of any changes (should they prove necessary) to our Oct. 4-6 conference plans.

In conclusion, I leave you with this message of hope penned by Jacob Glanville, Founder and CEO of Centivax, and look forward to seeing you all in October!

Thanks to multiple rapid successful synthetic biology, medical, and technology advancements, we are now armed with vaccination, breakthrough detection, and transmission management resources to enable in-person conferences in the pandemic. These technologies speak to the successes of innovation in synthetic biology mobilized in response to the viral threat, and should not only be applied but celebrated, as SynBioBeta can act as a beacon for how other conference organization groups can effectively resume in-person meetings and will attract and vitalize the synthetic biology and technologist communities to understand how the work from their community has enabled the return of the new normal.

Thank you for your ongoing support, trust, and belief.

Frank Tate
CEO
SynBioBeta

Science News
Antheia, a synthetic biology company developing plant-inspired medicines, and Ginkgo Bioworks, which is building a platform for cell programming, announced a partnership to accelerate the production of essential medicines.
Food companies and others should use the terms “cell-based” or “cell-cultured” when labeling and talking about seafood products made from the cells of fish or shellfish, according to a new Rutgers study.
For the first time, scientists have used the gene-editing tool Crispr-Cas9 to render humans effectively invisible in the eyes of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which use dark visual cues to hunt.
A team of researchers led by Jim Collins, a biomedical engineer at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, have created a test that detects SARS-CoV-2 infection from spit in three easy steps.

Funding News
Berkeley Lights announced a multi-year agreement with Bayer to develop and perform high-throughput functional screening workflows aimed at accelerating and expanding the discovery of novel traits.
RNA firm GreenLight Biosciences to go public in $1.2 billion deal: A Massachusetts-based synthetic biology company whose research ranges from developing pesticide alternatives for crops to a Covid-19 vaccine candidate plans to go public to advance its RNA manufacturing platform.
GentiBio is developing engineered regulatory T cells to build a better immune system and functionally cure autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases – and it now has $157 million more dollars of ammunition to do it.
Debut Biotech, a next generation biomanufacturing platform harnessing cell-free enzymes, announced its $22.6 million Series A financing, led by Material Impact.