Hi ,

I’m excited to share that Thomas Middleditch, star of the critically acclaimed HBO series "Silicon Valley", turned climate investor, will be speaking at SynBioBeta this year. Thomas will be joined by Seth Bannon, Founder of Fifty Years to talk about his passion for climate tech investing. Additionally I’m honored to be joined by the UK Member of Parliament Chi Onwurah, the Shadow Minister for Science Research and Innovation.

Interested in the intersection of synbio and human health? Want the inside story on the news and views from the thought leaders in the field? SynBioBeta’s Fiona Mischel is launching a new monthly newsletter dedicated to key insights, news, and trends in synthetic biology and biopharma and you can sign up here.

• Longevity startup VitaDAO raises $4.1m, backed by Pfizer, Balaji Srinivasan. Has science become too centralized? Too ossified? Enter decentralized science, or DeSci: a new way of conducting research, drug development, publishing, and communicating science – all on the blockchain. We have a track dedicated to DeSci at SynBioBeta this year, so join us to learn more about this exciting movement

VitaDAO is developing drug assets as IP-NFTs. Source: VitaDAO, scientific illustration by Dani Bergey.

• De-extinction company Colossal Biosciences raises $150M in Series B round & announces plans to bring back the dodo.

Dr. Beth Shapiro, Ph.D. (Lead Paleogeneticist and Colossal Scientific Advisory Board Member) and Ben Lamm (Colossal Co-Founder and CEO). Image: Colossal Biosciences.

• Twist Bioscience begins shipping commercial product from synthetic DNA manufacturing factory of the future. The Factory of the Future is a 110,000 square-foot facility in Wilsonville, Oregon. With its assembly-line style manufacturing approach, the sizable facility is expected to double Twist’s manufacturing capacity.
• San Francisco’s Wildtype, which raised an incredible $100 million in Series B last year from investors including Leonardo DiCaprio, says it expects to launch its cultivated sushi-grade salmon in restaurants later this year.

© Wildtype

• Profluent launches to design new proteins with generative AI: The company raised a $9 million seed round to apply the power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) models to the challenge of designing new biomolecules. You can catch Profluent speakers at SynBioBeta this year.
• Scientists have created an AI system capable of generating artificial enzymes from scratch. A deeper dive into AI design: in laboratory tests, some enzymes worked as well as those found in nature, even when their artificially generated amino acid sequences diverged significantly from any known natural protein.
• Join the WiSB Women’s Hour Valley DAO – a regular opportunity to learn, share and support women and underrepresented genders in synthetic biology!

New SynBioBeta 2023 speakers announced:

• Nathan Clark co-founded Ganymede.bio to focus on integrating wet lab instruments and workflows.

• Shervin Kamkar is VP of Business Development at the Genomics Division of Kura Biotech, a next-generation enzyme provider.

• Aaron Schacht is the CEO of BiomEdit, a new company funded by Ferment.co focused on microbiome innovation for animal health.

• Susanna Harris leads community development at Vibe Bio, where she brings together scientists, patients, and partners to accelerate the development of rare disease treatments. She will be speaking in the DeSci track.

New SynBioBeta 2023 Sponsors & Exhibitors:

• Industrial Microbes is developing sustainable materials from low-cost gases using biomanufacturing.

• Ferment is a company creation studio for the next wave of synthetic biology product companies.

• Thermo Fisher Scientific supplies scientific instrumentation, reagents and consumables, and software services.

• Sierra BioSystems’ mission is to increase access to the tools of genetic research around the world.

Environment news

• PETRONAS and SEDC Energy to develop microalgae oil for sustainable aviation fuel: The companies will jointly develop algae production technology which includes cultivation, harvesting and extraction of crude algae oil that will later be refined to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
• Meet the VIP of the burgeoning $25 billion cultivated meat market: Eric Schulze helped Upside Foods score the first U.S. regulatory approval for its cultivated chicken, and he’s just getting started.
• Kraig Biocraft Laboratories delivers the first two hybrid Dragon Silk™ silkworm strains for commercial production in an effort to develop spider silk technology for next-generation high performance materials.
• Amyris launches 4U By Tia™ haircare line exclusively at Walmart. Hemi15 is a breakthrough ingredient that nourishes and protects textured hair created using Amyris' Lab-to-Market platform, which leverages precision fermentation to create molecules that are bioidentical to those found in nature.

Health news

• Precigen announces closing of public offering of common stock: Gross proceeds to Precigen from the offering were approximately $75.0 million.
  
• Bay Area biotech uses AI to unlock RNA structures — and find new therapies in the process. Atomic AI, a new Bay Area biotech, is harnessing artificial intelligence to better understand and predict these structures in hopes of developing new therapeutics.
• Managing the risks of biotechnology innovation. A recent workshop held by the Council on Foreign Relations brought experts together to discuss new forms of global governance to manage those risks.
• The race to supercharge cancer-fighting T cells. Advances in genome editing and the ability to rewire cells through synthetic biology have led to increasingly elaborate approaches for supercharging T cells for therapy.
• NIH launches intramural bioengineering center to foster technology collaboration across the agency.

I hope that all your biological dreams come true this week!

Regards,
John

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John Cumbers
Founder, SynBioBeta

Who's hiring?

• Senior Customer Program Manager at MicroByre, Berkeley/Oakland Bay Area
  
• Scientist – Fermentation, Concerto Biosciences, Cambridge, MA
• Program Manager at ARPA-H, Flexible in the U.S.
• Director of Content‍, SynBioBeta, Flexible in the U.S.
• Senior Sales Manager, SynBioBeta, Flexible in the U.S.
• Sales Associate, SynBioBeta, Flexible in the U.S.
• Special Projects, Colorifix, England

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