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Video: Advancing the global synthetic biology movement

Governments and global organizations play a critical role in advancing biological solutions to our world’s biggest problems. Weather-resistant crops, low-carbon fuels, biomanufactured chemicals, and advanced medicines will struggle to make an impact without institutional support. But how can world leaders support these technologies when many are unaware of their potential? How can we build ethical and bio secure frameworks into global policies and create transparent dialogues between global leaders, bioengineers, and the public? In case you missed the discussion at SynBioBeta 2022, you can watch it now on YouTube.

Nishan Degnarain (World Economic Forum), Michelle Rozo (National Security Council), Megan Palmer (Stanford University), Ryan Morhard (Ginkgo BioWorks) and Drew Endy (Stanford University).

CHIPS and Science

The CHIPS and Science Act became law last month, and it's riddled with provisions that stand to impact the U.S. bioeconomy. There’s quite a list of provisions relevant to promoting the U.S. bioeconomy. Some of the substantial ones that jumped off the page are presented here by Mike Fisher, Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. Mike will be speaking more about this at SynBioBeta 2023 Oakland, May 23-25.

Funding News

Arsenal Biosciences announced the close of a $220 million Series B financing round to help the company expand its programmable cell therapy research activities and grow its pipeline of therapeutic candidates for solid tumor malignancies across a range of cancer indications.

Think Bioscience, a synthetic biology company focused on developing small-molecule therapeutics that target difficult-to-drug proteins, has raised $17 million in an oversubscribed Seed round.

"Think Bioscience’s approach encodes microbes with a drug design challenge and uses them to come up with new solutions, for example, novel inhibitors of a disease relevant enzyme," said Dr. Jerome Fox, cofounder and CEO at Think Bioscience.

Puna Bio raised a $3.7 million seed round to use extremophiles – microorganisms 3.5 billion years old, sourced from La Puna, the highest and driest desert on Earth – to develop biological inputs for agriculture that increase yields, reduce carbon emissions, and restore degraded soil.

Some big news from Jay Keasling’s lab this week: Engineered yeast brews precursors of anticancer drug vinblastine. Scientists genetically reprogrammed yeast to produce the alkaloids vindoline and catharanthine — the longest biosynthetic pathway to be transferred from a plant to a microorganism.

Jay Keasling, Professor at UC Berkeley (Photo by Peg Skorpinski).

Regards,
John

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John Cumbers
Founder, SynBioBeta

Featured News

Other News

• Ginkgo Bioworks appoints Dr. Behzad Mahdavi as Senior Vice President of Biopharma Manufacturing & Life Science Tools (Press release)
• Illumina is now accepting applications for the 6th global funding cycle of Illumina Accelerator to advance breakthrough applications in genomics, including therapeutics, diagnostics, agriculture, synthetic biology, software and direct-to-consumer applications. Applications are due by October 1, 2022.
• Synlogic achieves research milestone in collaboration with Roche for development of novel synthetic biotic to treat Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Press release)
• Biosensor protein could be used to detect deadly nerve agent: Scientists have designed a synthetic protein that quickly detects molecules of a deadly nerve agent. (Technology Networks)
• Lonza and Touchlight collaboration will expands customer’s access to DNA (Labiotech)
• Shiru teams up with Puratos to develop next generation egg replacers. Shiru – a startup producing proteins via microbial fermentation – has teamed up with bakery ingredients specialist Puratos to develop egg replacers. (Food Navigator)
• Corteva Agriscience and BASF collaborate to deliver the future of weed control to soybean farmers. The companies announced a long-term collaboration to develop new soybean weed control solutions for farmers around the world. (Press release)
• Synthace appoints Dr. Donald Deieso as new board chair (Press release)

Who's hiring?

• Head Of Strategy, Verb Biotics, Boston, MA
• Marketing Director, Verb Biotics, Boston, MA
• Lab Support Specialist - Media, Conagen, Bedford, MA
• Lab Support Manager, Conagen, Bedford, MA
• Senior Scientist, Analytical, Conagen, Bedford, MA
• Molecular Biologist, Conagen, Bedford, MA
• Research Associate, Synthetic Biology, Conagen, Bedford, MA
• Research Associate / Chemist, Conagen, Bedford, MA
• Scientist, Microbial Engineering, Conagen, Bedford, MA
• Scientist, Fungal Biology, Conagen, Bedford, MA
• Senior Software Engineer/ Staff Software Engineer, Inscripta, Pleasanton, CA or Boulder, CO
• Senior Scientist/ Engineer, Inscripta, Pleasanton, CA

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