Hi ,

Can you believe it? We're hitting our 500th Newsletter! What a ride it's been over the last 11+ years. I want to thank you all for sending me your news and tips on new technologies, product launches, and investments in the field. Please continue to enjoy keeping up to date on what's happening in the industry. Thank you for being part of the growing global bioeconomy, and here's to many more milestones together.

• Light-Driven Method Boosts Eco-Friendly Biomanufacturing with Novel Enzyme Reactions. In the quiet hum of a laboratory, a team of researchers saw an opportunity where others had only seen a dead-end. Their quest? To harness the raw power of sunlight and use it to spark life into nature's micro-machines: enzymes.

• Nanopore Sequencing Detects Protein Sequence Variation in Pioneering Breakthrough. In a striking demonstration of scientific ingenuity, an Oxford-based team of researchers has unveiled an innovative methodology for peering into the very fabric of life: proteins.

• Bit.Bio and BlueRock Set to Revolutionize Cell Therapy with New Collaboration on Tregs. The partnership will concentrate on developing and producing induced pluripotent stem cell-derived regulatory T cells (Tregs), instrumental in constructing therapeutics.

• Microbial Cell Factories: A Delicious and Glamorous Revolution. As awareness of environmental issues and sustainability rises, so does the demand for eco-friendly, high-quality food and beauty products. At this critical juncture, microorganisms emerge as potential key players, offering solutions to these seemingly disparate problems.

• The Bioconcrete Revolution: A Glimpse into a Greener Future: A new video presents a compelling narrative about the potential of this innovative material to revolutionize the construction industry and significantly reduce global carbon emissions.

• Fast and Cost-effective Blood Vessel Engineering Offers Hope for Cardiovascular Patients. A team of researchers from the University of Melbourne has successfully devised a fast, cost-effective, and scalable technique to engineer blood vessels using natural tissue.

• Meatable's Rise in the Cultivated Meat Landscape Gets $35M Boost for Pork Products. In the intricate tapestry of food evolution, there's a fresh thread that has seamlessly woven its way into the narrative: Meatable, the vanguard in the cultivated meat sector.

• AI Predicts the Enigmatic Origins of Tumors: Scientists have unveiled a machine-learning model that promises to revolutionize how we approach cancers of unknown primary origin.

• ValleyDAO Fuels the Future By Backing Sustainable Oil Production with Synthetic Biology. In a remarkable development for the synthetic biology sector, ValleyDAO has extended substantial financial support to Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, PhD.

Dr. Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro (Credit: Imperial College London)

• SynBioBeta 2023 Investment Report: Deep Dive: A few months ago we put out the SynBioBeta 2023 Investment Report and took a deep dive into the data through a webinar with Mark Bünger, CTO and Cofounder at Futurity Systems. In case you missed it, be sure to take a watch!

Other news:

• Kyverna Therapeutics Extends Series B Financing Round to $145 Million and Brings in New Investors. Kyverna continues to explore additional indications for its anti-CD19 CAR T-cell therapies, as well as develop a robust pipeline of promising immunotherapies aimed at addressing unmet medical needs. (Press release)

• The SOSV Climate Tech Summit aims to convene the climate tech startup ecosystem of founders, investors, technologists, corporates, policymakers, and media to discuss the extreme challenges ahead. The event is free, virtual, and will be held on Sept. 26-27, starting at 8 a.m. Pacific Time.

• Amber Bio Raises $26 Million Seed Financing Co-Led by Playground Global and Andreessen Horowitz to Advance New RNA-Based Gene Editing Platform. The funding will be used to advance a first-of-its-kind RNA editing platform that enables multi-kilobase edits, allowing a single drug to treat diseases with high allelic diversity. (Press release)

Left to Right: Amber Bio Co-Founders Jacob Borrajo, Ph.D., CEO and Basem Al-Shayeb, Ph.D., CTO (Photo: Business Wire)

• Ginkgo Bioworks announces a new collaboration with Merck focused on improving biologic manufacturing. This is the second collaboration between Ginkgo and Merck. In October 2022, the companies announced a biocatalysis project to improve Merck's active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing. (Press release)

• Why Climate Capital has a Bio fund: Climate Capital Bio is a pre-seed venture fund backing biotech companies building climate solutions that decarbonize the largest and least sustainable sectors of the economy.

Regards,
John

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John Cumbers

Founder, SynBioBeta

Who's hiring?

• Sales Associate at SynBioBeta (Remote)

• Senior Scientific Implementation Manager at Ganymede (Remote)

• Senior Scientific Software Engineer at Ganymede (Remote)

• Software Engineer (Full-stack) at Ganymede (Remote)

• Business Development Associate at Ganymede (Remote)

• Outbound Sales Development at LatchBio (San Francisco, CA)