Enhancing Biomaterials with Bolt Threads

The new program builds on our existing work with Bolt Threads optimizing their b-silk protein

Today we’re announcing a multi-project collaboration with Bolt Threads, a biotechnology company creating the next generation of advanced materials, to increase the production efficiency and performance of their portfolio of products and to develop additional novel proteins for their biomaterials. The first program in this collaboration aims to optimize the production efficiency of Bolt’s Mylo™ material, a leather alternative material made out of mycelium, the underground root-like system of fungi.

Mylo is an animal-free, sustainable alternative to leather grown from mycelium 

Through Bolt Threads’ production process, mycelium grows into a foamy layer that, once harvested, can be dyed and processed into sheets of material that can be customized to desired size, color, shape, and thicknesses. Mylo can be used in footwear, handbags, wallets, phone cases, and other products; the product is already used by brands like adidas, Stella McCartney, GANNI, and lululemon. Unlike traditional leather made from animal hides, mycelium leather does not rely on raising livestock, and unlike synthetic leather, Mylo isn’t petroleum-derived.

Through this collaboration, we aim to increase the growth rate of Bolt’s mycelium strain, lowering the overall production costs of Mylo. This collaboration also marks an expansion of our current work together, as we are already optimizing the sustainability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of Bolt Threads’ b-silk™ protein manufacturing process.

Over the last few years, the largest fashion brands worldwide and the textiles industry have collectively recognized the need to develop more sustainable and low-footprint materials. Bolt Threads is at the forefront of this shift, and Mylo represents this future. We are excited to leverage our Foundry and Codebase to help drive down the cost of producing Mylo, making the product more accessible to a variety of markets where innovative and exciting alternative materials can be used.

“Ginkgo’s expertise in engineering biology has enabled us to accelerate our work transforming the clean beauty and personal care industries with b-silk protein,” said David Breslauer, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Bolt Threads. “We are thrilled to be partnering with them again to optimize the production of our mycelium technology which will help make Mylo more accessible to consumers and brands alike.”

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Ginkgo Acquires Zymergen

Ginkgo completes acquisition of Zymergen

Today, we’re pleased to announce our completed acquisition of Zymergen.

This is our largest acquisition to date! It’s expected to significantly enhance our platform by integrating strong automation and software capabilities as well as providing a wealth of experience across diverse biological engineering approaches.

It marks an important step in our long term growth, and we’re thrilled to welcome Zymergen’s world-class team to Ginkgo. We are excited to integrate Zymergen’s capabilities into our platform and explore new and expanded partnerships and opportunities for their diverse array of product concepts currently under development.

Under the terms of the merger agreement entered into on July 24, 2022, Zymergen stockholders received, for each share of Zymergen common stock, 0.9179 shares of Ginkgo Class A common stock. Zymergen shares will no longer be traded on Nasdaq. GinkgoClass A common stock will continue to trade on NYSE under the ticker symbol DNA.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?


Forward Looking Statements

This blog post contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. You can generally identify forward-looking statements by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “explore,” “evaluate,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “seek,” “should,” or “will,” or the negative thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Ginkgo’s and Zymergen’s control. Statements in this blog post that are forward-looking, including the expected benefits of Ginkgo’s acquisition of Zymergen, are based on management’s current estimates, assumptions and projections, and are subject to significant uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond Ginkgo’s and Zymergen’s control. These factors include, among other things, general economic and business conditions; changes in global, political, economic, business, competitive, market and regulatory forces; judicial decisions; changes in tax laws, regulations, rates and policies; future business acquisitions or disposals; litigation and the ability of the combined company to protect its intellectual property rights; and the timing and occurrence (or non-occurrence) of other events or circumstances that may be beyond Ginkgo’s and Zymergen’s control. Additional information concerning these risks, uncertainties and assumptions can be found in Ginkgo’s and Zymergen’s respective filings with the SEC, including the risk factors discussed in Ginkgo’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, as updated by its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, in Zymergen’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, as updated by its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and in Ginkgo’s future filings with the SEC.  Important risk factors could cause actual future results and other future events to differ materially from those currently estimated by management, including, but not limited to, the risks that: Ginkgo is unable to achieve the synergies and value creation contemplated by the acquisition; Ginkgo is unable to promptly and effectively integrate Zymergen’s businesses, including retention of key personnel; Ginkgo management’s time and attention is diverted on transaction related issues; disruption from the transaction makes it more difficult to maintain business, contractual and operational relationships; or adverse developments or outcomes of legal proceedings that are pending or instituted against Zymergen, Ginkgo or the combined company. No assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do occur, what impact they will have on the results of operations, financial condition or cash flows of Zymergen or Ginkgo. Should any risks and uncertainties develop into actual events, these developments could have a material adverse effect on Ginkgo’s ability to realize the expected benefits from the acquisition. You are cautioned not to rely on Ginkgo’s and Zymergen’s forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are applicable only as of the date of such statements. Neither Zymergen nor Ginkgo assumes any duty to update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, as of any future date.

Ginkgo Expands Agricultural Biologicals Division, Closes Deal with Bayer

Today, Ginkgo closed our deal with Bayer, expanding our ag biologics division.

As a result of the close:

  • The nitrogen fixation and R&D platform assets of Joyn Bio are now integrated into Ginkgo.
  • Bayer’s West Sacramento Biologics Research & Development site and platform is now a part of Ginkgo’s ag biologics division.
  • Ginkgo becomes a multi-year strategic partner with Bayer to develop biological solutions in areas such as nitrogen optimization, carbon sequestration, and next generation crop protection.
  • Bayer will continue work to optimize Joyn Bio’s nitrogen fixation technology, aiming to complement synthetic fertilizers going forward.

Today we’re pleased to announce the beginning of our multi-year strategic partnership with Bayer to accelerate research and development of biological products for agriculture. The transaction includes the divestment of Bayer’s West Sacramento Biologics Research & Development site and its internal discovery and lead optimization platform; these assets are now integrated into Ginkgo.

Through this deal, the nitrogen fixation and R&D platform assets of Joyn Bio—the joint venture created by Bayer and Ginkgo Bioworks in 2017—will be fully integrated into Ginkgo. This will enable the continued advancement of Joyn Bio’s innovative nitrogen fixation platform. As part of the agreement, Bayer retains the right to commercialize the technology to complement synthetic fertilizer use in the coming years.

Sustainable, climate-smart and innovative agricultural solutions

Bayer is now the first major partner of Ginkgo Bioworks’ expanded agricultural biologicals platform. The new collaboration will be focused on important programs in the areas of crop protection, nitrogen fixation, and carbon sequestration to identify next generation biologicals that provide clear benefits to growers.

“Biological solutions play a critical role in the agricultural innovation ecosystem, and we see tremendous opportunity for these products to add even more value for agriculture in the future,” said Dr. Robert Reiter, Head of R&D at Bayer’s Crop Science Division. “[Bayer’s] open innovation approach will accelerate the product pipeline and will make sure that we bring high-quality biological solutions and innovative technologies to the market faster.”

Microbial derived products for agriculture

Here at Ginkgo, we’re committed to harnessing the power of programmable biology to enable sustainable food production and food security worldwide. We aim to develop and advance agricultural microbial solutions across crops and geographies through broad, fully-enabled technical platforms that address diverse market needs. We will work independently with different partners in the discovery of microbial derived products for agriculture.

We look forward to partnering with Bayer and other innovative companies to bring more applications on to Ginkgo’s expanded agricultural biologicals platform so that growers worldwide can develop breakthrough products.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

This blog post contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding Ginkgo’s expectations regarding its ability to expand its platform capabilities in agricultural biologicals through the transaction and the expected outcomes and benefits of the transaction. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties as described in the “Risk Factors” section of Ginkgo’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on August 15, 2022 and other documents filed by Ginkgo from time to time with the SEC. Actual events and results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements.

Detecting Engineered Biology with IARPA & Draper

New technologies to detect engineered DNA

We’re proud to announce the completion of IARPA’s Finding Engineering-Linked Indicators (FELIX) — a program created to augment and improve current biodetection and biosurveillance capabilities. The program was a collaboration between the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA; the research and development arm of the U.S. Intelligence community), Draper (a nonprofit engineering innovation firm), and Ginkgo.

We’ve developed a suite of new computational tools for FELIX, while Draper has developed a new experimental platform to help detect and identify when samples include genetically engineered biological systems. The results from the program will be presented on October 17, 2022 at 11am on YouTube.

Current methods for detecting signs of biological engineering are typically costly, slow, and capable of detecting only a subset of all possible genetic modifications. In collaboration with IARPA, Ginkgo developed an initial set of computational tools called ENDAR (Engineered Nucleotide Detection and Ranking) that assist trained analysts to identify genetic engineering in next generation sequencing (NGS) datasets. This software aims to make it possible for scientists to detect engineered DNA at scale.

Breakthrough for biosecurity

“Through their work on the FELIX program, Ginkgo and Draper have achieved two major breakthroughs for the biodetection community,” said David A. Markowitz, Program Manager at IARPA. “The ability to detect genetic engineering in complex biological samples has long been a moonshot goal, and these new capabilities are poised to transform national biosecurity efforts.”

Designed to work across a range of biological organisms that may be found in complex, multi-species environments, ENDAR tools and methods could provide early alerts to the presence of engineered organisms and help expedite appropriate responses, thereby mitigating adverse consequences.

Ginkgo has a core belief in the promise of engineered biology—a thriving bio-based economy that delivers benefits to society, the environment, and our health. We care deeply about securing that vision by ensuring that biology is engineered and deployed responsibly. Working with IARPA, we’ve developed a fundamentally new biosecurity capability that will enhance our ability to detect, characterize, and respond to biological threats. We’re excited to explore opportunities to deploy ENDAR as an integral component of our global biosecurity platform.

Draper’s contributions to FELIX, under its contract with IARPA, include development of a lab-based genetic test, a custom bioinformatics pipeline that contextualizes DNA sequencing data and miniaturized microarray hardware all with the goal of characterizing otherwise impossible to detect genetic engineering. Potential applications include biothreat detection, environmental monitoring, and food inspection.

“At Draper, we believe that advances in gene editing technology are creating new opportunities for biosecurity,” said Laura Seaman, Principal Scientist and Machine Intelligence group leader at Draper. “Under the FELIX program, we have developed a device and associated lab and computational methods that are sensitive enough to pick out an engineered organism in a complex environmental background containing millions of natural organisms—the signal-to-noise ratio is a significant improvement over current methods.”

The event featured a panel with participants including, Catherine Marsh, IARPA Director; David A. Markowitz, IARPA Program Manager; Joshua Dunn, Head of Design, Ginkgo Bioworks; Laura Seaman, Principal Scientist and Machine Intelligence Group Leader, at Draper; and Erin Rosenberger, Senior Member of Technical Staff, Biological Microsystems Group, at Draper. During the panel, the panelists will discuss the program findings and also feature a demo of the research results.

Watch a livestream of the presentation of results from the FELIX program on October 17, 2022 at 11am here.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Exciting M&A Update: Scaling our Platform Capabilities

Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. At Ginkgo, we’ve always strived to bring the best technologies—including biological tools, automation, and software—together onto one platform to better serve our customers. 

Today we’re excited to announce that we’ve signed definitive agreements to acquire two teams and technologies that will help us achieve this important mission, one from Bayer and Joyn that builds our vertical capabilities in agricultural biologicals and the other, Zymergen, that brings in-house core hardware and software to accelerate our horizontal Foundry capabilities.

We are building this platform for our customers, who come to us with their biological design challenges and product ideas. We reiterate this point a lot, because it is unusual in the biotech industry: we aren’t interested in building our own products, we’re interested in building a platform that will allow the rest of the world to deploy biology as a solution for our hardest challenges, from food security to pandemic response, from supply chain resilience to climate change.

We previously announced our plans for this agreement with Bayer, to acquire Bayer’s 175,000-square-foot West Sacramento Biologics Research & Development facility, team, and internal discovery and lead optimization platform, as well as integrate the R&D platform assets from Joyn Bio, our joint-venture with Leaps by Bayer formed in 2017. 

We share a common vision with the teams at Joyn and Bayer that will be joining our team to develop and deploy the best that biology has to offer in agriculture. To ensure sustainable food security for an ever growing population, we need to invest in biological solutions and work with the best teams around the world to bring these solutions to market. We are excited to be able to make this platform accessible to innovative companies and teams who may otherwise not have the resources or expertise to develop these capabilities in house. We look forward to engaging with other customers in supporting the development of their agricultural biological programs in addition to Bayer on our new agriculture biologics platform.

We also share a common vision with Zymergen—that biology can transform a wide range of industries including manufacturing, agriculture, and medicine. Through the transaction announced today and expected to close in the first quarter of 2023, we plan to integrate Zymergen’s core automation and software technologies for scaling strain engineering capacity into our Foundry, including Zymergen’s machine learning and data science tools for exploring known and unknown genetic design space. 

We expect this acquisition to significantly enhance the strength of our platform to better serve our customers, both through the expansion of our Codebase of biological assets and the automation, software, and data tools of our Foundry. We will as always remain a horizontal platform, enabling customers across industries rather than producing our own products, and will support Zymergen’s plans to evaluate strategic alternatives for their Advanced Materials and Drug Discovery businesses. 

We have always had incredible respect for the Zymergen team and the strength of the technologies that they have built for cell programming. We are beyond thrilled to integrate Zymergen’s capabilities into our Foundry, which we expect to accelerate the growth of our platform as we continue to deliver on our mission to make biology easier to engineer for our customers, helping us drive down the costs of cell programming as we invest in scale. We can’t wait to welcome Zymergen technical teams, who will support our scaling objectives.

We’re so excited to work with the amazing teams from Bayer, Joyn, and Zymergen to continue to grow our offerings and our capabilities to support the essential work happening across industries to grow the bioeconomy. See key legal info here and read more about these exciting transactions in our press releases today on Bayer and Zymergen, or watch the recording of our conference call this morning here.

Scaling Production of Cultured THCV with Cronos Group

Cronos and Ginkgo Announce Achievement of THCV Equity Milestone

Today, we’re excited to announce an achievement in our partnership with Cronos Group, an innovative global cannabinoid company. Together, we have hit the third target productivity milestone in our partnership to produce eight cultured cannabinoids. Using our platform for organism design and development, Cronos has successfully achieved the productivity target for tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV), a cannabinoid hypothesized to reduce the appetite-enhancing property of THC. Access to additional rare cannabinoids will support Cronos’ innovation pipeline and commercialization strategy.

Our partnership with Cronos launched in 2018, with the goal of accessing rare molecules in the cannabis plant to create innovative and differentiated products that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive. The program combines Cronos’ deep understanding of the biological structure and function of cannabinoids with our vast experience designing microorganisms for the production of cultured products across pharmaceuticals, agriculture and more.

Producing cultured cannabinoids at industrial scale

“Continuing to hit these productivity milestones in partnership with Ginkgo fuels our innovation pipeline focused on creating borderless products utilizing rare cannabinoids that amplify and differentiate the consumer experience,” said Mike Gorenstein, Chairman, President and CEO of Cronos. “We are excited about the possibilities that THCV is expected to give us and look forward to getting more products with rare cannabinoids into market.”

Working with Cronos to develop innovations in cannabis is an opportunity for us to apply synthetic biology in a way that is helping bring the cannabis industry forward and make a real impact on its market and the customers it serves. The progress we’ve made thus far in our collaboration is a true testament to both the potential of synthetic biology and the world-class teams at Cronos and Ginkgo.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Unlocking the Potential of Expression Systems for Medicines with Novo Nordisk

 

Novo Nordisk will leverage Ginkgo’s Foundry and Codebase to create novel expression hosts for its pharmaceutical products.

Hundreds of millions of people currently live with diabetes, obesity, and other serious chronic diseases, putting a strain on individuals, families, and healthcare systems. More effective medicines could improve treatment options for these people. — Today, we announced that Novo Nordisk, a leading global healthcare company, will leverage Ginkgo’s cell programming platform to unlock the potential of expression systems, which may accelerate and enhance the discovery and development of their biological medicines for chronic diseases.

What if you could grow medicines?

It’s an honor to work with partners like Novo Nordisk that not only have an incredible range of critically important products, but that also provide us with the opportunity to do meaningful work that could help so many patients. At Ginkgo, we are always on the lookout for projects that will have an outsized impact on people’s lives and well-being. We’re excited to be working with Novo Nordisk in our efforts to use biology to create better medicines for patients with chronic diseases.

The work aims to expand and improve the treatment options available for the millions of people with chronic diseases.

“Novo Nordisk is constantly pushing the boundaries for innovative tools to bring new treatments to people living with diabetes and other serious chronic diseases,” said Brian Vandahl, Senior Vice President, Global Research Technologies, Novo Nordisk. “Using synthetic biology and the reprogramming of expression system genomes, we have the potential to engineer biological systems that will expand the chemical space of biological medicines.”

Under the terms of the partnership, Ginkgo and Novo Nordisk will launch a multi-year collaboration. Ginkgo will receive an upfront R&D fee and is eligible to receive milestone payments as the parties advance in the collaboration.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Optimizing the Brightness of Glowing Plants with Light Bio

Leveraging Ginkgo’s engineering capabilities to optimize performance of Light Bio’s light-emitting plants

We’re excited to announce a new collaboration with Light Bio – a company creating bioluminescent plants for home and garden. The agreement will leverage Ginkgo’s plant cell assays for bioluminescence engineering. The aim: to improve the luminescent output and efficiency of the enzymes within Light Bio’s glowing ornamental plants.

Nothing captures the wonder of biology quite like seeing glowing plants in person. Our platform enables developers to imagine with biology and to design all types of cells, from bacteria and yeast to mammalian and plant cells. We’re so excited to bring this unique application onto our platform and to help Light Bio bring the magic of glowing plants to people.

Light Bio has discovered a new type of bioluminescence mechanism and uses synthetic biology to engineer plants to efficiently emit light. The original light emission pathway Light Bio uses in its glowing plants comes from bioluminescent mushrooms. The company is now focused on expanding its engineering capabilities to support the creation of glowing plants.

“We are excited to collaborate with Ginkgo toward additional multifold output and efficiency improvements powered by Ginkgo’s plant cell engineering capabilities across both individual enzyme and metabolic pathway improvements,” said Keith Wood, CEO, Light Bio.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Developing Water Quality Biosensors with FREDSense

Ginkgo’s strain development capabilities to help develop advanced biosensors

Today, we’re excited to announce our partnership with FREDsense Technologies Corp, a next generation water quality platform company leveraging synthetic biology to build field kits for faster, cheaper, and more efficient analysis. Through this partnership, we seek to build four distinct microbial strain biosensors, compatible with FREDsense’s field-ready hardware for remote water quality monitoring applications.

Demand for scalable monitoring and testing systems has increased, as water quality becomes an ever-growing environmental and public health concern. Conventional water quality test results are often delayed, since samples must be transported to labs for chemical analysis. FREDsense builds portable solutions to efficiently assess the chemicals in the water at the source. This allows for rapid modification of water treatment processes in real-time without the need for external lab equipment.

Supporting real-time field detection of harmful molecules and toxins in any water source

The biosensors in development by Ginkgo aim to support real-time field detection of harmful molecules, and may be used to generate solutions for groundwater and industrial water management systems.

Partnering with FREDsense is an exciting opportunity to apply our strain development capabilities to powerful biosensor technology for an important application. Protecting our water sources is a mission critical initiative: life on this planet as we know it depends on it. We’re eager to work toward enhancing the capabilities of FREDsense’s platform to monitor for harmful contaminants in water.

“Water is our most critical resource, and we now have the technology to detect in real-time many of the threats or contaminants that can impact the water that our environments and communities depend on,” says David Lloyd, CEO of FREDsense. “Through this partnership with Ginkgo, we aim to introduce rapid, simple and accurate testing to deliver water quality monitoring systems to those that most need it. We believe that synthetic biology is the key to solving some of the biggest challenges facing the water industry globally and are very excited to partner with Ginkgo on this vision.”

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

New Platform Venture: Launching BiomEdit

BiomEdit intends to leverage Ginkgo’s platform to discover and develop microbiome-based animal health products to improve animal health, animal protein production, and livestock disease monitoring.

We’re excited to announce the launch of BiomEdit, a microbiome innovation company that is expected to discover, develop, and introduce novel probiotics, bioactive molecules, engineered microbial medicines and microbial monitoring services for animal health.

Microbiome science is a rapidly growing field creating breakthroughs in animal health based on the microbial communities that live in animals and their surrounding environment. BiomEdit intends to discover, develop and introduce differentiated products that address some of the greatest needs for innovation in animal health, including medicated feed ingredients, nutritional health and therapeutics for livestock and pet species, as well as biosecurity technology for animal disease monitoring.

BiomEdit is Ginkgo’s latest platform venture, created in partnership with Elanco Animal Health — a leading global animal health company.

In October 2021, Elanco announced its intention to carve out its microbiome platform and pipeline under the leadership of Aaron Schacht, BiomEdit CEO and former Elanco executive vice president of Innovation, Regulatory and Business Development, to concentrate and focus more resources on its high value late-stage Pet Health pipeline. BiomEdit is the result of this separation, and was developed with Ferment Co., the company creation studio that helps ideate and launch new companies across a variety of end-markets that use cell programming to support human and environmental health and well-being.

Elanco will contribute intellectual property and a pipeline of ongoing programs to BiomEdit, which will be staffed with members of the former Elanco microbiome R&D team. The team brings the expertise and experience needed to build on the foundation of microbiome work started at Elanco. By leveraging foundational programs from Elanco, intellectual property from both Elanco and Ginkgo, and an experienced team, BiomEdit should be well positioned as a stand-alone company to develop and launch innovative products to address unmet needs in animal health.

“Livestock producers and veterinarians are calling for new products that address antibiotic resistance and improve livestock sustainability,” said Mr. Schacht. “Coupling the platform, pipeline and deep expertise of the former Elanco microbiome team with Ginkgo’s unique screening and strain engineering capabilities will accelerate and amplify our ability to advance novel animal microbiome inspired products for animal health.”

“Elanco is excited to continue its participation in the microbiome by partnering with Ginkgo, Viking Global Investors and Anterra Capital to create the next-generation animal health innovation player,” said Jeff Simmons, president and CEO of Elanco Animal Health. “We wish Aaron and his team the best as they build out this novel innovation platform to address unmet needs in animal health, such as alternatives to antibiotics.”

Ginkgo has significant expertise in the discovery, design and monitoring of microbes at scale for a wide array of functions.

BiomEdit plans to leverage Ginkgo’s state-of-the-art cell programming platform to improve the design and development of probiotics, bioactives, engineered microbial medicines, and microbial monitoring services. BiomEdit joins other Ginkgo platform ventures such as Joyn Bio, Motif FoodWorks, Allonnia, Arcaea, Verb Biotics and Ayana Bio.

We are always on the lookout for opportunities to accelerate our partners’ abilities to address massive challenges, such as antibiotic resistance in livestock. Together, we see Ginkgo and BiomEdit addressing significant opportunities in the animal health industry with new breakthroughs based on microbiome science. We deeply depend on the health of animals in our ecosystem and supply chains; the potential applications for our cell programming platform in this area are far reaching.

In addition to the assets and intellectual property contributed by Elanco and Ginkgo, BiomEdit is launching with a targeted Series A funding raise of $40 million, with participation by Viking Global Investors and Anterra Capital. In exchange for their respective asset and intellectual property contributions, Elanco and Ginkgo are expected to retain approximately 40% combined proportional ownership of BiomEdit, on a fully-diluted basis, upon the completion of the Series A financing. Elanco’s ownership will be in non-voting shares.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC acted on behalf of Elanco as sole placement agent on the financing.

Find the full press release here along with all of the latest news from the Ginkgo team.