News Digest #213 – Five companies raise $207M, aligning business with ocean philanthropy

This week, food tech startup Impossible Foods received an investment of $114 million to expand production of their plant-based burger in the US and Asia. Check out Twist’s coverage of synthetic biology for sustainable food.

Speaking of sustainable food, check out the F3 Fish Oil Challenge, sponsored by The Anthropocene Institute, SynBioBeta, the World Bank and others. The goal is to speed up our transition away from ocean exploitation by developing fish oil replacements for farmed fish. The challenge registration closes at the end of the month and they welcome ideas at all stages of development for the production of sustainable fatty acids. Also, check out this thought-provoking article by SynBioBeta’s Chris Oakes on how to align business and philanthropy to save the ocean.

Poseida Therapeutics, a San Diego-based company translating gene engineering technologies into CAR-T cell therapies, has raised a $30.5 million series B, and Ecovia Renewables, a company engineering microbial systems for chemicals and fuels, announced a partnership with SEPPIC and raised $1 million in seed financing. Protein engineering company Codexis is expecting to raise $32.3 million by selling shares of its common stock, while Synlogic expects to raise $30 million.

Opentrons announced that it will bring the power of low-cost, open-source automation and reproducible protocols to iGEM teams. The company will select 10 iGEM teams to receive their new OT-2 robots free of charge, and offer all teams a 50% discount on an Opentrons robot.

Codexis, Opentrons, and iGEM will all be at SynBioBeta 2018 discussing how they are advancing biological engineering. I hope to see you there too. In other news, Gilson and Synthace just announced a new collaboration aiming to make biological research more efficient and reproducible. Lanzatech just announced its jet fuel derived from ethanol is now eligible for commercial flights! If you love Rob Reid’s work, check out his podcast with George Church.

Regards,
John

Who’s Hiring?

Research Fellow in Open Synthetic Biology: CRI, Paris

Synthetic Biologist / Geneticist: Eligo Bioscience, Paris, France

Synthetic biologist/Protein engineer: XENO Cell Innovations, Pilsen, Czech Republic

Product Manager, Cells: Synthego, California

Senior QA Specialist: Synthego, California

To feature your job here, please get in touch

All the News

Novartis inks $8.7B AveXis buyout to build gene therapy unit (Fierce Biotech)

National Corn Growers Association names Lygos winner of international award for its Bio-Malonate™ technology (Press Release)

Agilent and BioTek join forces to create an integrated metabolic analysis and imaging platform (Press Release)

Step-by-step synthesis of DNA (Chemistry World)

New England Biolabs® launches “Lessons from Lab & Life™” podcast (Press Release)

DEINOVE introduces Phyt-n-Resist®, the first pure phytoene for skincare (Press Release)

Science Exchange and Ranomics collaborate to offer online access to their mutagenesis platform (Press Release)