INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The pace at which the scientific breakthroughs working to bend the machinery of life to the whims of manufacturing have transformed into
real businesses has intensified competition in the biomanufacturing market.That just one reason why Synvitrobiois rebranding as it takes on
$2.6 million in new financing to pursue opportunities in biopharmaceutical and biochemical manufacturing
Under its new name, Tierra Biosciences, the company hopes to emphasize its focus on agricultural and biochemical products.The company is one
of several looking to commercialize the field of &cell-free& manufacturing — where biological engineers strip down the cellular building
blocks of life to their most basic components to create processes that ideally can be more easily manipulated to produce different kinds of
chemicals.There a standard way to create these cell-free processes (described quite nicely in The Economist).Grab a few quarts of culture
with some kind of bacteria, plant or animal cells in it
Then use pressure to force the cells through a valve to break up their membranes and DNA
Give the goo a nice warm environment heated to roughly the average temperature of a human body for about an hour
That activates enzymes that will eat the existing DNA.Put all of it in a centrifuge to separate out the ribosomes (which are the important
Take those ribosomes and give them a mixture of sugars, amino acids, adenosine triphosphate (the molecular compound that breaks down to
provide energy for all biological functions) and new DNA with a different set of instructions on what to make and voila! Micro-factories in
a test tube.Along with co-founders Richard Murray of the California Institute of Technology and George Church, one of the living legends of
modern genetics, chief executive officer Zachary Sun designed Tierra to be an engine for new biochemical discovery.&Everything floats in the
cytoplasm… We keep that internal stuff and that allows us to run reactions where a cell wall isn&t necessary
I want to reduce the complex system down to its component parts,& says Sun
&We look at this as a data collection problem
We want to use cell-free to tell you what to put either in a cell or in cell-free systems… We can collect more data faster using our
cell-free system.&The startup is already working with the Department of Energy research institution at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to
develop processes to create vanillin (vanilla extract) and mevalonate (turpentine) from biomass.It an approach that is already showing the
potential for investment returns in life sciences and pharmaceuticals
For inspiration, Tierra can look to the South San Francisco-basedSutro Biopharma.That company has signed a drug discovery agreement with
Merck to develop new immune-modulating therapies (that bring the immune system into check) for cancer and auto-immune disorders, in a deal
worth up to $1.6 billion if the company hits certain milestones — in addition to a $60 million upfront payment
Sutro raised more than $85 million in new funding in July (from investors including Merck) and just filed to go public on the
Nasdaq.According to Sun, the newly named Tierra has its own partnerships with global 2,000 companies in the works
&We&re looking to scale those commitments
We see the application space as being this natural products environment,& he says.There&re multiple avenues to pursue, with the technology
widely applicable to everything from pesticides to pharmaceuticals, flavorings and even energy.Cyclotron Road team photos
Zachary Sun.&Synthetic biology at its core is about applying engineering best practices to speed up the ‘design-build-test& cycles in the
reprogramming of existing or construction of new biological systems
By component-izing and modularizing the cell they can radically increase the speed of those cycles,& says Seth Bannon, a co-founder of the
venture capital firm Fifty Years, which invests in startups commercializing &frontier& science.For the investors, entrepreneurs and
reporters who witnessed the birth of the cleantech bubble a decade ago and then tracked its implosion in subsequent years, the excitement
this kind of technology elicits is another of history rhymes.Technologies like Tierra aren&t new
San Diego-based Genomatica has been working on biological manufacturing for the past 18 years
The company is now exploring a cell-free system to grow chemicals that are used in the manufacture of materials like Lycra
Since 2008, Medford, Mass.-based GreenLight Biosciences has been working to bring its own biologically based zero-calorie sugar substitute
to market.What may be different now is the maturity of the technologies that are being commercialized and the perspective of the startups
coming to market — who have the benefit of avoiding the missteps made by an earlier generation.Investors led by Social Capital with
participation from Fifty Years, KdT Ventures and angel investors seem to see a difference in these companies
And large research institutions are also marshaling resources to support the vision laid out by Sun, Murray and Church.DARPA, the National
Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, Cyclotron Road and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Science Foundation
and the Gates Foundation have all backed the company, as well.&So many therapeutic molecules come from nature
As the DNA of plants, animals and microbes is read in exponentially increasing volume, we expect to find useful and game-changing chemistry
Tierra platform will allow us to look for molecules which might otherwise be buried in the complexity of cells& metabolism,& says Louis
Metzger, chief scientific officer of Tierra, who comes from a background of drug discovery.
