Category: Strain Optimization Services

Developing Water Quality Biosensors with FREDSense

Posted on by Jason Kelly

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

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.

Discovering Novel Live Biotherapeutics with Microba

Posted on by Jennifer Wipf

What if you could use bacteria as therapeutics?

Microba Life Sciences, a precision microbiome science company, and Ginkgo announced a partnership to identify single-strain, live bacteria product (LBP) candidates against autoimmune diseases. The collaboration aims to build on Microba’s precision approach to LBP development with an in-depth evaluation of the company’s strains using Ginkgo’s high throughput, automated screening capabilities.

Microba will leverage Ginkgo’s high throughput screening capabilities to identify potential therapeutic candidates for autoimmune diseases.

The human gut microbiome is composed of trillions of bacteria that have an outsized influence on human health and disease. In recent years, scientists have developed a deeper understanding of the relationship between specific bacteria residing in the gut and various health outcomes, leading to a growing interest in using bacteria for therapeutic applications. Clinical trials using live biotherapeutics – biological products that contain live microorganisms applicable to the prevention, treatment, or cure of a disease – have delivered promising results.

There is growing consensus that live biotherapeutics may represent a major class of therapeutics in the coming years.

“We believe the human microbiome currently represents a missing piece in the treatment of major chronic diseases, and as a result a number of microbiome-based therapeutics are progressing through clinical development globally” said Luke Reid, CEO at Microba. “Ginkgo’s high throughput screening automation combined with our novel data-driven approach to therapeutic discovery from the microbiome can potentially accelerate development of breakthrough new drugs for autoimmune diseases.”

Leveraging Ginkgo’s platform to discover, develop, and optimize live biotherapeutics

Through this partnership, Ginkgo will provide high-throughput screening for Microba’s proprietary library of human microbiome-isolated strains, with the goal of improving treatment for autoimmune diseases such as lupus, psoriatic arthritis, and certain autoimmune liver diseases. Microba plans to leverage Ginkgo’s high-throughput anaerobic culturing, multi-omics data collection and analysis, functional bioassay screening, and media and fermentation optimization capabilities to generate data sets that may help characterize potential therapeutic and non-therapeutic uses of the strains. The initial partnership combining Microba’s biobank and Ginkgo’s anaerobic development capabilities is expected to run approximately two years.

Microba is doing truly innovative work during an exciting time for the field of microbiome science. We’re happy to welcome new partners like Microba as we apply our platform to more applications in the living therapeutics and microbiome space.

Microba plans to launch its initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Australian Securities Exchange on April 5. In connection with the partnership, Ginkgo is investing $3.5 million USD in Microba. The IPO was fully underwritten by Canaccord Genuity and Bell Potter.

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

Improving Production Efficiency for Vibrant Food Colors with Phytolon

Posted on by Jennifer Wipf

Phytolon and Ginkgo aim to leverage cell programming to produce vibrant betalain pigments across the full yellow-to-purple spectrum.

Scientists have developed hundreds of artificial food dyes by using the tools of synthetic chemistry to convert petrochemical sources into a wide range of colors. While artificial dyes are visually appealing and cheap to manufacture, many have been banned in food and feed due to health concerns. But now, the tools of synthetic biology offer an opportunity to tap into the vibrant colors of nature to produce more sustainable, yet equally vibrant, colors.

What if you could grow sustainable, vibrant dyes?

As consumers increasingly seek out more sustainable and nature-derived products, the food industry is working to find food colors that have equivalent pigment vibrancy to those found in petrochemical-based dyes but which come from biological sources. Phytolon, a growing startup company making natural food colorants, announced a partnership with Ginkgo today to produce vibrant cultured food colors via synthetic biology.

Phytolon has developed a proprietary process using precision fermentation of certain yeast strains to produce betalain pigments—red and yellow pigments naturally found in plants like beets and cactus fruit. Phytolon and Ginkgo are partnering with the goal of maximizing the production efficiency of purple and yellow betalain-producing strains to enable the creation of colors across the full “yellow-to-purple” spectrum. Under this partnership, Phytolon is leveraging Ginkgo’s ability to engineer biology at scale to work together on the production of these betalain pigments. The project aims to help maximize the business opportunity of Phytolon’s vibrant colors for applications in the food and cosmetics industries.

Synthetic biology helps make it possible to produce nature’s wide range of colors at scale.

“We’re excited to work with Ginkgo to develop natural food colors that can potentially outperform conventional artificial dyes in cost and performance,” says Dr. Tal Zeltzer, co-founder and CTO of Phytolon. “We believe biotechnology makes it possible to produce a wider range of colors than ever before that may outperform current benchmark colorants, and we look forward to building products that may meet and even exceed consumer expectations for healthier, sustainable foods, all while aiming to maintain industry requirements for high quality and cost-efficiency.”

We love enabling growing startups like Phytolon through our platform, using biotechnology to challenge industry norms and attempt to build a fundamentally better product than what’s on the market today. The planet needs new sustainable solutions, and we are excited to partner with Phytolon to support a more sustainable food system.

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

Developing Next-Generation Gene Therapy Capsids with Selecta Biosciences

Posted on by Ankit Saxena

Selecta Biosciences intends to use Ginkgo’s cell programming platform to develop next-gen gene therapies using AAV capsids.

Gene therapy is one of the newest wave of treatments for many rare or orphaned diseases. However, current methods often result in unwanted immune responses.

What if you could grow the newest generation of therapies for human disease?

Together with Selecta Biosciences, Ginkgo is launching a collaboration to develop safer and more effective next-generation gene therapy adeno-associated viral capsids. Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are a type of gene delivery vector system. But several obstacles, including how these viruses interact with the immune system (immunogenicity), how well they can get into the cells (tropism), and how well they get DNA into the cells’ genomes (transduction efficiency), must still be overcome before fully realizing the AAV vector systems for many patient treatments. There are many types of AAVs, and they each work differently in different tissues, partially because of variations in the capsid–the protein coat of the virus.

The partnership with Selecta leverages the unique platforms of both companies as we seek to develop next-generation viral capsids with improved transduction, enhanced tissue tropism, and reduced immunogenicity. Ginkgo plans to design and engineer the capsids, and Selecta will conduct all pre-clinical and clinical studies thereafter.

“We are excited to continue our partnership with Ginkgo in a second collaboration that leverages Ginkgo’s leading cell engineering platform to design viral vector capsids with the goal of improved transduction, enhanced tissue tropism and reduced immunogenicity” said Carsten Brunn, CEO of Selecta Biosciences. “By combining ImmTOR with next-generation, fit-for-purpose AAV vectors, we hope to further improve the safety and efficacy of AAV-mediated gene therapies.”

Under the terms of the collaboration, Ginkgo is eligible to earn upfront research and development fees and milestone payments, including certain milestone payments in the form of Selecta common stock. In addition, Ginkgo is eligible to earn clinical, regulatory and commercial milestone payments of up to $200 million in cash for each of a specified number of products, which have the potential to total, in the aggregate, up to $1.1 billion. Ginkgo is also entitled to potential further downstream value in the form of royalties on sales.

Jason Kelly, CEO of Ginkgo, added, “Gene therapies utilize naturally occurring viral capsids that elicit immune responses and often exhibit safety and toxicity issues. We believe our collaboration with Selecta has the potential to confront major challenges within the gene therapy space and represents an important application of our cell programming platform. We look forward to executing on our shared vision and offering a potential solution for challenges in gene therapies that prevent treatment for millions of patients.”

Read the full press release here.

Improving the Manufacture of Biosynthetic Heparin with Optimvia

Posted on by James Waters

Optimvia will leverage Ginkgo’s cell and enzyme engineering platform as well as its fermentation process development expertise to improve the manufacture of biosynthetic heparin.

Heparin is a life-saving drug that prevents blood clots and is classified as an essential medicine by the World Health Organization. In addition to acting as an anticoagulant, it is important in treating a great number of medical issues, including adult respiratory distress syndrome, allergic rhinitis, asthma, and inflammatory bowel disease. Currently, however, it is isolated from animal sources, mostly pig or cattle, which are limited by livestock availability.

What if you could grow life-saving medicines on demand?

Optimvia is a biotechnology company specializing in engineering enzymes and their cofactors to synthesize complex therapeutic molecules. Ginkgo’s platform serves customers across industries seeking to develop new and better products using biotechnology, including partnerships to improve manufacturing processes and strengthen supply chains of key medicines. Producing non-animal derived heparin on Ginkgo’s platform is intended to be the proof of principle for Optimvia’s technology for the synthesis of sulfated glycans.

Enabling enzymatic manufacturing could create supply chain diversity and reduce or eliminate the need for high volume extraction of heparin from porcine intestines.

“The goal of producing biosynthetic heparin is similar to Genentech’s famous breakthrough of creating insulin through recombinant cell-based methods as opposed to relying on extraction from pig pancreas,” said Keith Kleeman, CEO, Optimvia. “We believe that combining Optimvia’s novel technology and Ginkgo’s capabilities will enable commercially viable, cost effective and safe biosynthetic heparin that could eliminate the world’s dependence on livestock sourced heparin entirely.”

Under this partnership, Optimvia seeks to leverage Ginkgo’s cell and enzyme engineering platform, as well as its fermentation process development expertise, to rapidly improve the performance of Optimvia’s biosynthetic heparin manufacturing technology.

“Ginkgo’s platform helps emerging startups develop and optimize their products and reach commercial scale,” said Ginkgo CEO Jason Kelly. “We’re pleased to welcome Optimvia as the newest member in our ecosystem. We believe scalable synthetic heparin could introduce much needed resiliency to the drug supply chain, improve access to this essential medicine, and reduce our dependence on industrial animal agriculture.”

Read the full press release here.

Investigational Synthetic Biotic Medicine for Homocystinuria with Synlogic

Posted on by Patrick Boyle

Homocystinuria (HCU) is an inherited disorder that affects tens of thousands of people every day. HCU occurs when a person is unable to metabolize the amino acid methionine, a precursor to homocysteine; the result is an excessive accumulation of homocysteine and its metabolites in a person’s blood and urine. Patients develop multiple symptoms, including bone defects, intellectual disabilities, and life-threatening blood vessel obstructions. Many patients are required to comply with rigid, restrictive diets and have few treatment options available.

What if we could tell bacteria inside these patients to metabolize methionine, lowering homocysteine levels and reducing the effects of diseases like HCU?

SYNB1353, an engineered strain of the probiotic bacteria E. coli Nissle (EcN), was designed and is being developed through a collaboration between Synlogic and Ginkgo to do exactly that. This novel strain has the ability to consume methionine in the human gut, helping to avoid excessive accumulation and conversion to homocysteine in plasma. High-throughput testing of codebase libraries by Ginkgo enabled SYNB1353 to advance from preclinical proof-of-concept to candidate strain in the space of a year.

“SYNB1353 is an exciting addition to the Synlogic pipeline aimed at helping patients living with diseases of methionine metabolism. Starting with HCU, we see these diseases as the natural next step in our metabolic portfolio after the successful proof of concept of synthetic biotics in phenylketonuria announced earlier this year. This program builds on what we have learned from our metabolic program work to date, with the potential to provide a new therapeutic option to reduce the devastating consequences of these diseases.” said Dr. David Hava, chief scientific officer at Synlogic. “The advancement of SYNB1353 illustrates both the potential of our Synthetic Biotic platform to generate new therapeutic candidates and the value of our collaboration with Ginkgo.”

SYNB1353 is the first product developed through a research collaboration between Synlogic and Ginkgo and the first investigational medicine developed on Ginkgo’s platform to enter IND-enabling studies.

Synlogic expects to file an investigational new drug (IND) application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for SYNB1353 and begin clinical development in 2022. Researchers from Synlogic and Ginkgo will present preclinical data supporting advancement of SYNB1353 into IND-enabling studies at the International Congress of Inborn Errors of Metabolism 2021. The poster, Development of an Investigational Methionine-consuming Synthetic Biotic Medicine (SYNB1353) for the Treatment of Homocystinuria, will be available at the International Congress of Inborn Errors of Metabolism 2021 on November 21-23, 2021 in Sydney, Australia.

We’re so honored to be able to support Synlogic in building their incredible platform to provide potential new treatment options for people living with difficult to treat diseases. This is just the beginning for a new generation of medicines unlocked by the power of synthetic biology, and we’re excited to be working with Synlogic on multiple additional preclinical programs in their portfolio.

Read the full press release here.

Developing High-Efficacy Adjuvants for Vaccines with SaponiQx

Posted on by Jennifer Wipf

Adjuvants—substances known to enhance our immune response—are a key component of many existing vaccines. And while vaccines are one of the most powerful tools we have to fight pandemics, ensuring widespread access to efficacious vaccines continues to be a major challenge around the world.

SaponiQx, a new subsidiary announced today by Agenus, plans to use Ginkgo’s platform to drive innovation in novel adjuvant discovery and vaccine design.

Their efforts will focus on building an innovative adjuvant platform to deliver both sustainable manufacturing approaches and a secure supply of known adjuvants, as well as discover novel adjuvants and develop new, more effective vaccines utilizing optimized antigen-adjuvant pairings.

Ginkgo’s experience in metabolic engineering, enzymatic diversification, and process optimization can be applied to discover novel adjuvants and improve current manufacturing processes that can then be applied toward developing better-integrated vaccines. We’re proud that our platform is being used by companies across the vaccine supply chain to develop and manufacture the materials necessary for life-saving vaccines.

Garo Armen, CEO and Chairman of Agenus and Executive Chairman of SaponiQx, had this to say: “Agenus is pleased for SaponiQx to collaborate with Ginkgo Bioworks to develop its novel saponin products from sustainably sourced raw materials, with a goal to meet the current demands placed on the vaccine industry for pandemic vaccines. The QS21 Stimulon™ adjuvant has shown long term efficacy and long-term protection in both commercially launched and experimental vaccines.”

New Platform Ventures: Launching Verb Biotics, Ayana Bio

Posted on by Jason Kakoyiannis

Today we’re announcing the launch of two new companies via the Ferment Consortium: Verb Biotics and Ayana Bio.

Verb—a probiotics innovation company—will focus on identifying and designing new strains of probiotic bacteria with advanced properties for human nutrition, health, and wellness. Ayana plans to support human health and wellness by harnessing bioactive compounds for use as complementary medicine.

Verb Biotics
The probiotics category is a $50B global industry that’s growing rapidly. As awareness and understanding of the human microbiome—the trillions of bacteria that live in and on your body—has grown over the past decade, there’s been tremendous interest in probiotic-enhanced foods, beverages, and supplements. Many existing probiotic products use strains of bacteria common to yogurt and other fermented products, but these strains have a number of challenges including limited shelf life, poor stability, and restrictive metabolic profiles.

Since Ginkgo has significant expertise in the discovery and design of microbes with a wide array of functions, Verb plans to leverage our high-throughput platform to perform sequencing, proteomics and metabolomics analysis, pathway design, cell culturing, and fermentation work in order to improve the design and development of probiotics.

Verb is launching with $30 million in Series A funding provided by Viking Global Investors and Cascade Investment.

Ayana Bio
To address issues ranging from supporting a healthy immune system, to aiding metabolism, to promoting healthy aging, consumers are looking for health products that are complementary to conventional medicine. Two categories of products that offer complementary health products—nutraceuticals and traditional medicines—represent over $400 billion.

The bioactive ingredients that go into products in these categories come from a range of natural sources such as medicinal plants and fungi. However, unsustainable harvesting, variability in the source organisms, and the methods of preparation all contribute to uncertainty around these important molecules and limit the potential for widespread use.

Ayana plans to collaborate with global industry leaders in consumer packaged goods, supplements, specialized nutrition, over-the-counter medicines, and traditional medicines to bring to market standardized bioactives that provide consumers with confidence in quality and reliability. Our cell programming platform will support Ayana’s mission to bring to market high purity, clean and reliable medicinal bioactives in convenient forms.

Ayana is launching with $30 million in Series A funding provided by Viking Global Investors and Cascade Investment.

Ferment Consortium
The Ferment Consortium is a company creation studio that works with Viking Global Investors and Cascade Investment to help incubate, fund, and launch new companies that use cell programming to support human and environmental health and wellbeing. (Psst! If you have a great idea of how to grow the future, Ferment Co would love to hear from you.)

Verb and Ayana join our other Platform Ventures: Joyn Bio, Allonnia, and Motif FoodWorks, which recently raised a $226 million Series B round led by Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and BlackRock.

Engineering Living Biotherapeutics for Gastrointestinal Health with Tantu

Posted on by Cecylia Ferrandon

Digestive disorders affect tens of millions of people in the U.S. each year, and current treatments don’t sufficiently promote gastrointestinal healing, resulting in many patients undergoing invasive surgeries to improve their quality of life.

But what if you could specifically design a living medicine—a microbe—that aids intestinal healing, transforming the way these patients are cared for?

That’s exactly what Tantu Therapeutics is trying to do. They’re working to create an orally administered, living biotherapeutic that will produce and apply anti-inflammatory therapeutic proteins directly into diseased sites in the gut. The living medicine aims to improve gut barrier function and faster mucosal healing in patients where systemic anti-inflammatory therapies are not enough.

And they’ve come to Ginkgo to help accelerate the research and development of this new therapeutic. We plan to apply our automated foundry to speed up the traditionally slow process of candidate strain construction and genomic integration and validation. Our goal is to accelerate Tantu’s first program and potentially help them reach clinical proof of concept in patients faster.

Tantu’s lead therapeutic candidate is an engineered microbe that produces anti-inflammatory and healing agents from inside the gut lumen—something that no clinically approved therapeutic currently does. Tantu’s local delivery strategy is designed to improve patient outcomes by reducing reliance solely on systemic anti-inflammatory drugs, which can suppress a patient’s immune system. Their living biotherapeutic products are being designed to complement proven approaches to further improve patients’ health and quality of life.

Through our platform, we’re able to support startups in the biotech industry as they bring new innovations to the field and society.

We’re excited to partner with a pre-seed company like Tantu; our goal is to reduce their time-to-market. Our program with Tantu gives us the opportunity to leverage our expertise in pharmaceuticals and support the development of a potentially transformative therapeutic for the millions struggling with digestive disorders.

Companies across numerous industries use Ginkgo’s cell programming platform to find more effective, environmentally friendly ways to create products including food ingredients, fragrances, cosmetics, medicines, and more. By enabling the design of organisms that can produce valuable biological products, we’re helping accelerate the development of innovative, bio-based solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.