Category: Platform News

Multi-Target RNA Discovery Collaboration with Pfizer

Posted on by Jason Kelly

Today we’re thrilled to announce a collaboration with Pfizer focused on the discovery of RNA-based drug candidates.

Pfizer will leverage Ginkgo’s proprietary RNA technology to advance the discovery and development of novel RNA molecules across priority research areas. Ginkgo will receive an upfront payment and is eligible to receive research fees and development and commercial milestone payments, up to an aggregate total of $331 million across three programs. Ginkgo is entitled to potential further downstream value in the form of royalties on sales.

RNA therapeutics that encode proteins with the potential to treat or cure diseases represent an exciting new approach in medicine with the possibility of far-reaching application.

Our RNA technology combines high-throughput screening of the behavior of RNA constructs with a multi-parameter design framework to identify novel natural and synthetic elements optimal for a particular application. We will deploy these capabilities with the goal of achieving efficient production, circularization, improved stability, and enhanced translation of each RNA construct.

“RNA therapeutics are proving to be an important platform to advance the world of scientific innovation, and with progress in synthetic biology we have the potential to create new RNA treatments that may benefit patients worldwide. Access to Ginkgo’s proprietary platform will help enable Pfizer to search for novel and exciting RNA constructs with improved stability and expression that could lead to more effective treatments.”

Will Somers, PH.D., Head, Biomedicine Design, Pfizer

Billions of patients around the world have already benefited from advances in RNA-based technologies.

We’re thrilled to be able to help enable the discovery and development of novel drugs using this powerful modality by applying our platform technologies which are designed to program RNA for maximum therapeutic effect. Ginkgo’s approach enables and accelerates discovery across different disease areas and modalities for our partners, who bring deep expertise in drug development. We can’t wait to leverage our broad and deep RNA Codebase and deploy our Foundry to enable the era of programmable medicines with the Pfizer team.

To learn more about Ginkgo’s RNA Therapeutics offering, visit our webpage.

Ready to talk to our team about your RNA project? Get in touch here.

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

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Enzyme Discovery and Engineering at Foundry Scale

Posted on by Ginkgo Bioworks

Ginkgo Ferment 2023, Platform Presentation:

Ginkgo’s Head of Protein Engineering, Emily Wrenbeck, PhD, shares how our foundry makes it possible to generate valuable data that drives enzyme discovery and optimization.

Watch the full presentation here or read below for a summary.

At Ginkgo, we understand the value of data in biological engineering.

We source natural libraries of proteins through public and proprietary sequence databases. And we’ve built a broad computational protein design toolkit that includes classic methods like molecular dynamics and Rosetta. We also use the latest AI models for protein predictions, including AlphaFold and EVcouplings. Our Protein Production Services allow us to take a supervised machine learning approach to protein design, which means we train models directly on the experimental data that we generate in the process.

Get in Touch!

What does all of this look like in practice? Here’s an example: 

  • A customer asked Ginkgo to optimize an enzyme that was critical to their project. The challenge? The enzyme was known to be difficult to engineer, due to its recalcitrant nature and unsolved reaction mechanism. In this case, traditional rational protein engineering approaches were not feasible.
  • To tackle this problem, Ginkgo opted for a data-driven approach to protein design. We engaged in four rounds of Design, Build, Test, and Learn. In the early rounds, we used a design toolkit with sequence-based, self-supervised model active sign mutagenesis and Rosetta docking to explore the sequence to activity relationship of the protein.
  • In the successive rounds, we fed all the data into our platform to train models and build designs. The library sizes in the final round were able to realize a big leap in performance with a rather small library. As the models are given more data, they get more predictive, enabling us to hit our goals in a much more focused way.
  • The outcome of this approach was a tenfold improvement over the starting enzyme. Our data-driven approach proved to be effective, even for a challenging enzyme that was not amenable to traditional protein engineering techniques.

This case study highlights the importance of how data enables breakthroughs in biological engineering. It also shows the power of a platform approach that combines state-of-the-art AI and computational tools with a data generation engine.

By investing in data generation and computational tools, we can push the boundaries of what is possible in protein design and engineering.

We’d love to add your enzyme to our growing list and help design and engineer it to fit your needs. Learn more about our Ginkgo Enzyme Services today!

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Get in Touch!

Introducing: Bioworks7 Mammalian Screening at Scale

Posted on by Jason Kelly

Our newest foundry increases our capacity to serve customers in biopharmaceuticals, biomanufacturing, and general mammalian programming for therapeutic applications

Today, we’re announcing the opening of Bioworks7, the latest expansion of our biological engineering foundry. With this new space, we’re increasing our capacity and capabilities to serve our partners in the spaces of cell and gene therapy, biomanufacturing and general mammalian programming for therapeutic applications and new biopharmaceutical modalities.

Ginkgo’s foundry automates and scales the process of organism engineering, allowing engineers to prototype thousands of biological designs. Our evolving platform equips companies and labs from startups to large pharmaceutical companies with access to robust technology, without the need for them to invest in costly lab and R&D infrastructure in-house, and aims to drive down the cost per biological design.

“Following our initial efforts in Bioworks4 in 2019, and expansion to our Cambridge facility, Ginkgo has created a strong foundation for culturing, engineering, and interrogating a variety of primary cells and cell lines to support both discovery and manufacturing efforts for cell and gene therapy, RNA therapeutics, and biologics including antibody and enzyme-based therapies,” said Narendra Maheshri, Head of Mammalian Foundry at Ginkgo Bioworks. “With Bioworks7, Ginkgo is able to further scale this work with dedicated capabilities for stem cell engineering, centralized mammalian cell operations services, and expanded capabilities in existing areas.”

This expansion of our R&D space will enable us to serve more strategic partners in applications across therapeutics and biomanufacturing.

In addition to the new foundry space, Ginkgo has also added expertise across our biopharma team, including the appointment of Dr. Behzad Mahdavi, senior vice president of biopharma manufacturing & life science tools. Ginkgo’s existing work in the biopharma space – such as partnerships with Aldevron, Biogen, Microba, Moderna, Novo Nordisk, Optimvia, Persephone, SaponiQx, Selecta Biosciences, Synlogic, Tantu, Totient, and Merck – span many therapeutic areas and approaches and contribute to the company’s growing expertise and Codebase. In addition, Ginkgo recently acquired Circularis, a biotechnology company with a proprietary circular RNA and promoter screening platform, to enable new solutions across bioproduction, RNA therapeutics, cell therapy, and gene therapy partnerships.

Since the opening of Bioworks4 when we formally kicked off our work in the mammalian space, we’ve experienced significant growth, creating new opportunities for us to advance our capabilities and contribute to our valued pharma partners. As the synthetic biology ecosystem rapidly evolves and the urgent need for biopharma options increases against the backdrop of the pandemic, we’re energized to expand our foundry to bring new capabilities to service the biopharma industry. With today’s opening, we look forward to enabling our partners to program mammalian cells at scale for more effective biomanufacturing workflows and new and improved biopharma products.

The Bioworks7 facility comprises 6,600 square feet of Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) lab space at Ginkgo’s headquarters in Boston’s Seaport District. It is co-located with Bioworks4, Ginkgo’s other mammalian foundry space, allowing for synergy with existing spaces within our headquarters. Notably, Bioworks7 houses a dedicated space for induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) work and advanced robotics to further scale and automate a variety of mammalian workflows.

By investing in the expansion of our mammalian foundry platform, Ginkgo expects to provide significant runway to support new programs in the pharmaceutical and biotech vertical.

Bioworks7 and Ginkgo’s advancement in the biopharma industry comes on the heels of our announcement of our foundry-enabled methods for large-scale, pooled combinatorial library screening of CAR domains for improved persistence. As our platform evolves to spearhead monumental work in the biopharma space, Ginkgo is equipping companies with the tools they need to innovate and shape therapeutics.

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

Posted on by Jason Kelly

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

Posted on by Jason Kelly

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.

Acquiring Altar and Circularis to Strengthen Our Capabilities

Posted on by Ginkgo Bioworks

Ginkgo strengthens technical capabilities through acquisitions of Altar and Circularis to provide further capabilities to customers in adaptive laboratory evolution, circular RNA, and promoter screening

We are excited to announce two new acquisitions today: Altar, a French biotechnology company that has developed a proprietary adaptive evolution platform, and Circularis, a biotechnology company with a proprietary circular RNA and promoter screening platform. Through these acquisitions, we expect to offer new solutions to customers across multiple industries and further bolster our capabilities across the full stack of biological engineering.

At Ginkgo, we are constantly searching for technologies and capabilities that will make biology easier to engineer and help our customers achieve their goals. Altar will help us achieve this mission through the integration of a fleet of its automated adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE) instruments into Ginkgo’s Foundry to serve our customers in industries including the food and beverage, biofuels, biomaterials, cosmetics, animal health, and human health sectors. The Circularis platform will enhance our capabilities in circular RNA and ultra-high-throughput screening of promoters, enabling us to develop new solutions for customers across bioproduction, RNA therapeutics, cell therapy, and gene therapy applications.

Incorporating Altar’s adaptive laboratory evolution platform

We’ve come a long way in rational genome editing and high-throughput testing over the last decade. But it still often remains challenging to engineer microorganisms that meet target specifications under harsh, industrially-relevant conditions. That’s due in part to the complexity and unknowns of the underlying genetics of organisms that grow in these unfavorable conditions and settings. ALE can be a powerful approach to address this challenge.

By incorporating Altar’s ALE platform into our existing strain engineering and screening capabilities, we expect to be able to routinely engineer and identify phenotypes that meet our customers’ specifications. Selected strains from ALE will be characterized and further validated by our existing suite of test workflows. We’ve had success collaborating with Altar in the past on customer programs and are thrilled to welcome them to the team.

“As the range of programs we work on continues to expand, it is imperative that we have the best tools in rational design as well as the ability to leverage the inherent diversity and creativity that emerges from evolutionary processes,” said Nikos Reppas, our senior director of Foundry Technology. “We’re excited to welcome the Altar team to Ginkgo and look forward to integrating the Altar technology into Ginkgo’s suite of offerings so we can better serve existing and future customers.”

“We founded Altar to increase the feasibility and reduce time-to-market for bio-manufactured products,” said Simon Trancart, CEO of Altar. “We’ve been working with Ginkgo for a few years now, and are thrilled to join the Ginkgo platform as we work to accomplish our mission at an even greater scale by collectively using biology to drive innovation across industries.”

Incorporating Circularis’ proprietary circular RNA and promoter screening platform

The Circularis platform will strengthen our ability to assist customers in their cell and gene therapy development. The acquisition will improve our capability to rapidly identify novel promoters with appropriate strength and tissue-specificity designed into customer-specific delivery modalities. Leveraging Ginkgo’s ability to explore large numbers of genetic designs, these promoter libraries can be explored in combination with modified therapeutic payloads and capsids. This will provide our customer who are gene therapy developers with a solution that works across any range of cell or organism models. Similarly, the Circularis platform will give us the ability to rapidly identify context-specific promoters for cell therapy applications, such as those that modulate gene expression in the tumor microenvironment.

“Circularis has built an exceptional platform to screen gene expression regulatory elements, a need across the cell and gene therapy space,” said Narendra Maheshri, our head of Mammalian Foundry. “We are excited to leverage the strong expertise of the Circularis team to further develop circular RNA methods for therapeutic use, and can’t wait to incorporate this technology into existing and upcoming cell programs across therapeutic applications as well as more broadly.”

“Circularis was founded because we saw a need for better tools to control gene regulation in a range of species. Our team is incredibly proud of what we’ve built, and the opportunity to scale it on the Ginkgo platform means we’re a major step closer to realizing this technology’s potential,” said Mat Falkowski, Chief Executive Officer at Circularis. “We are excited to bring the power of the Ginkgo platform to both Circularis’ already existing customer base and future partners.”

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

Posted on by Jason Kelly

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.

Ginkgo Publishes Inaugural Sustainability Report

Posted on by Ryan Morhard

Today, we are happy to share Ginkgo’s inaugural sustainability report, Caring at Ginkgo.

At Ginkgo, we believe our platform can play an important role in addressing some of the major societal and environmental challenges that we face today.

Further “caring how our platform is used” has always been a key lens through which we consider the choices we make as we grow our business, and, since 2020, has been an explicit part of our company-wide goal-setting framework. When we went public last year, we declared that “ESG is in our DNA.”

Accordingly, over the past year, the Ginkgo ESG Working Group has worked across the Ginkgo ecosystem and with key external stakeholders to produce this first report and to position ourselves for routine reporting moving forward.

Our inaugural sustainability report is organized across three themes:

  • The Impact of Cell Programming (“Environmental”)
  • Technology Isn’t Neutral (“Social”)
  • Ownership Is the First Step in Caring (“Governance”)

Read the full report here.

We all know that today’s ‘ESG’ reporting systems are far from perfect. Nonetheless, we are proud to have built out a first-class team that has strived to maintain an authentic, “first principles” approach to ESG reporting. Our inaugural report is guided by key ESG frameworks and standards (e.g., the Global Reporting Initiative and Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics), as well as a third-party led materiality assessment.

We look forward to sharing our progress and continuing the conversation about the impacts and implications of synthetic biology.

If you have comments on our report, or if you would like to chat more, please email [email protected]. In the meantime, thank you for being a part of this ongoing conversation, because a future where we can grow everything requires care, transparency, and many voices.

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

What will you grow with Ginkgo?

Expanding Our Platform Capabilities in Agricultural Biologicals and Launching Flagship Partnership with Bayer

Posted on by Anna Marie Wagner

Announcement Highlights:

  • Planned transaction expands Ginkgo’s horizontal platform capabilities to support agricultural biologicals R&D from discovery through formulation and early field trials and will offer services to allow access to customers of all sizes in the agriculture industry
  • Under the proposed transaction, Ginkgo to acquire Bayer’s West Sacramento agricultural biologicals site and team, adding a 175,000 square-foot R&D facility with pilot scale fermentation, formulation, and greenhouse facilities, along with access to Bayer’s large agricultural strain collection
  • Joyn Bio, the joint-venture between Ginkgo and Leaps by Bayer formed in 2017, to be integrated into the parent companies, with the core technology platform becoming part of Ginkgo’s platform and key products being advanced by Bayer in a new collaboration
  • Bayer to be an anchor customer of Ginkgo’s agricultural biologicals offering, signing a follow-on multi-year platform collaboration deal to enable continued development of Joyn Bio’s flagship nitrogen fixation program and launching new programs in fields including next-generation crop protection and carbon sequestration

We’re excited to announce plans to significantly expand our platform capabilities in agricultural biologicals from discovery to field. These capabilities will be built through a series of transactions; Ginkgo will acquire Bayer’s 175,000 square-foot West Sacramento Biologics Research & Development site, team, and internal discovery and lead optimization platform. Ginkgo will also integrate the R&D platform assets from Joyn Bio, a joint-venture between Ginkgo and Leaps by Bayer formed in 2017. Bayer will be the anchor agricultural customer of Ginkgo’s expanded platform, entering into a significant new multi-year collaboration which will focus on the advancement of Joyn’s marquee nitrogen fixation program as well as new programs in areas such as crop protection and carbon sequestration.

While Ginkgo will continue to evaluate the operating expenditures required to launch and scale its expanded agricultural capabilities following these transactions, it is expected that the cash proceeds from this multi-year collaboration with Bayer may significantly offset such anticipated expenditures. The proposed transactions are projected to close before the end of 2022, pending the finalization of definitive agreements and subject to regulatory approvals.

Agricultural biologicals are a rapidly growing category of solutions that offer tremendous sustainability and performance benefits. Against the backdrop of rising fertilizer costs and novel pest and disease threats, growers are calling for new agriculture solutions that can increase yields while decreasing their environmental footprint. While chemical and plant trait solutions have long been the dominant solutions on the market, demand for biologicals has increased dramatically.

Bayer, Ginkgo, and Joyn share a common vision, which is to enable biological products to be a critical part of the solution to the world’s greatest agricultural and environmental challenges. We are incredibly impressed by the success of the Joyn team and the deep expertise of Bayer’s West Sacramento R&D team and are thrilled to have them join Ginkgo as we build deep end-to-end capabilities in ag biologicals on top of our large scale horizontal platform. We believe we’re bringing together the most innovative minds in agriculture with the experience of a team that has brought several effective biological products to market for Bayer — opening this platform up to the world has the potential to truly revolutionize the field.

Bayer has long been committed to expanding its product offerings to benefit growers around the world. In recent years, the company has made a strategic decision to focus on becoming the preferred research, development, and commercial partner in the biologicals segment, while leveraging an “open innovation” model to be able to partner broadly with disruptive discovery companies.

Through this agreement, Bayer is committing to a significant multi-year collaboration, advancing multiple programs including a marquee nitrogen fixation program as well as a suite of other programs in areas such as next-generation crop protection and carbon sequestration.

“Biological solutions will play a critical role in the agricultural innovation ecosystem, and we see tremendous opportunity for biologicals to add even more value for agriculture in the future because they are effective and offer environmental benefits that producers want,” said Bob Reiter, Head of R&D for Bayer Crop Science. “Bayer is moving to strengthen its product development and commercial positioning through strategic research partnerships for new product development, and we are excited to deepen our relationship with Ginkgo, which we expect to be a key partner for many years to come.”

Over the last five years, Joyn has developed a new class of microbial solutions in partnership with Bayer and Ginkgo. Through this transaction, Joyn’s product concepts will be advanced by Bayer, with a particular focus on its nitrogen fixation program, while the platform assets and supporting team members will be integrated into Ginkgo as the company expands its support for agricultural biologicals.

Ginkgo will offer these new platform capabilities to a wide variety of customers in the agriculture space.

Ginkgo expects to provide a full stack of services in this field. This extension of our platform will allow companies of all sizes to access best-in-class lab-to-field translation expertise, greenhouse capacity, formulation capabilities, and pilot fermentation.

“With support from Ginkgo and Bayer, Joyn Bio has made groundbreaking discoveries across a number of programs that will be foundational for future work in biologicals,” said Michael Miille, CEO of Joyn Bio. “We are excited to take this platform to the next stage, with Bayer advancing key programs to the next level and working with Ginkgo to open our capabilities up to a broader set of commercial partners.”

The parties expect to sign a definitive agreement and proceed toward an efficient close, supported by ongoing integration planning efforts. More details and updates will be provided when available.

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

New Platform Venture: Launching BiomEdit

Posted on by Jason Kelly

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.