INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As biotechnology becomes more central to new innovations in healthcare, material science and manufacturing, one of the nation’s research
hubs is getting a new accelerator called Petri to launch companies focused on the commercialization of new technologies.Backed by the
Boston-based venture capital firm Pillar, Petri has a three-year $15 million commitment to back companies developing new biotech
applications in food, healthcare, industrial chemicals and new materials — along with the enabling technologies to bring these products to
market.“We’re at the inflection point where these technologies will impact and continue to impact health but will also impact food,
agriculture, chemicals and materials,” says Petri co-founder, Tony Kulesa
“Everything we touch has some element of biology.”Pillar has already invested in a couple of companies that show the potential promise
of new biotech research coming from Boston-based universities, like Boston University, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.Asimov,io, a company that has set an ultimate goal of designing new genomes for industrial applications, was co-founded by
graduates from Boston University and MIT, and is a part of the Pillar portfolio
PathAi, a company working on enabling technologies for computational biology, also counts an MIT grad as a co-founder
Meanwhile, Harvard’s George Church has been instrumental in the development of a number of biotech companies working at the frontier of
genetic applications for healthcare and manufacturing.As an instructor at MIT, Kulesa spent seven years at MIT watching, in his words, how
engineering has transformed biology
“It became clear to me that these technologies need to get out in the world,” he said.Joining Kulesa as a managing director is Brian
Baynes, a serial entrepreneur who founded Midori Health, an animal nutrition startup; Kaleido Biosciences, a microbiome control focused
company; Celexion, a protein engineering and synthetic biology company; and Codon Devices, a synthetic biology toolkit company which was
sold to Ginkgo Bioworks .Over time, Kulesa and Baynes expect to have 10 to 20 companies in each cohort as the program expands
In addition to checks of at least $250,000 the Petri accelerator has lab and office space available for each company.The companies also
could benefit from potential partnerships with companies like Ginkgo Bioworks, which happens to share office space in the same building,
and with the accelerator’s clutch of big-name advisors and “co-founders” recruited from across the life sciences industry.These
co-founders, who collectively hold a double-digit equity stake in Petri’s accelerator, include Reshma Shetty, from Ginkgo Bioworks; Emily
Leproust of Twist Bioscience; Stan Lapidus, who was at Exact Sciences and Cytyc; Daphne Koller, the co-founder and chief executive of
Insitro; Alec Nielsen, the founder Asimov; and researchers Chris Voigt of MIT and Pam Silver and George Church from Harvard’s Wyss
Institute.Genetically engineered organisms are finding their way into everything from food to fuel to chemistry
Companies like Impossible Foods, which uses genetically modified soy product, has raised hundreds of millions for its protein replacement,
while Solugen, a manufacturer of chemicals using genetically modified organisms, has raised tens of millions to commercialize its technology
And Ginkgo Bioworks has raised nearly half a billion dollars to pursue applications for industrial biology.“Engineering thinking has
arrived in biology and the number of entrepreneurs that are interested in this area has grown dramatically,” says Pillar founding partner
Jamie Goldstein, in a statement
“Unlike classic biotech, these ideas don’t require tens or hundreds of millions before you can demonstrate value — creating the
opportunity for different funding models.”
