Membio is developing a world class biomanufacturing platform to enable the cost-effective and scalable production of whole cells, including red blood cells. Blood is a necessary prerequisite for many life-saving interventions, making a reliable blood supply an essential part of any healthcare system. Membio is on a mission to provide the world with a safe and sustainable supply of blood.

The vast majority of food dyes used today are synthetic chemicals derived from petroleum which have been linked to allergies, hyperactivity, and even cancer. Biocolorants do exist, but they are expensive to use and don’t hold their color when cooked or processed; insect-based dyes aren’t halal, vegan or kosher.

Michroma’s sustainable solution uses edible fungi cells that express the natural colorant into the bioreactor. No solvents are needed to extract and purify the color. The performance characteristics of their dyes are far superior to existing biocolorants.

Modern diseases are a result of cultural evoluton outpacing biology, and so inflammation has become maladaptive. The safety issues limit thet current repertoire of anti-inflammatory drugs from serving a majority of patients. In 2018, human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) were discovered in the blood of pregnant women and an epidemiological study showed that elevated levels of key HMOs were associated with rheumatoid arthritis remission. Out of the 600 quintillion potential glycans, 300 million years of mammalian evolution have sorted out 200+ HMOs that are functionally bioactive in the body.

Intrinsic Medicine is a platform company innovative safe, bioactive sugars (like those HMOs) as a new therapeutic modality. With a combined 30 years of pharmaceutical industry experience at Ionis, Jason and Alex have been are using two key HMOs to be the only safe and effective solution for young people with irritable bowel syndrome, and they are taking their lead assets to clinical trial now.

Dalton Bioanalytics has developed a new way of analyzing all of the different types of biochemicals in blood. Using tried-and-true liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, they measure proteins, lipids, electrolytes, metabolites, and other small molecules–providing a more complete analysis at a fraction of the cost while maintaining data integration and integrity.

This data rich platform has applications for human health, from discovering novel biomarkers to developing new clinical tests to drug development. Our vision is to create a single low cost liquid biopsy that can be used for early detection across a wide range of common and rare diseases and conditions. Dalton is also working with many Fortune 500 companies to understand and develop better food and consumer goods, and optimize bioprocesses for industry.

Every Biolumen fiber pill is as effective as 21 conventional fiber pills. Taken with meals or snacks, Biolumen knocks 15-20 points off your sugar spike, reducing insulin response.

Working with ProDigest’s artificial gut system, the gold standard in microbiome assays, SugarSink Superfiber showed dramatic benefits:
+37% butyrate
+34% propionate
+37% acetates
Biolumen is working with two international corporates on product lines of snacks.

One way cells communicate to each other through long distances is via exosomes. Originally thought to be cellular garbage, exosomes are now a powerful opportunity for therapeutics. Many competitors are focused on packaging inside the exosome to use as delivery vesicles, and thus completely ignores the shell as a modality for therapeutics.

Diadem Biotherapeutics is engineering a platform to decorate the outside of exosomes, so that they act as signaling molecules. By engineering the surface of exosomes, with signaling agonists, they can craete a new therapeutic modality, 10,000X more potent than the unattached protein. Moreover, they can engineer potent combinations of multiple receptor agonists. The team is currently performing IND-enabling studies for oncology and autoimmune disorders.

The most valuable plant products are difficult to grow, and make up a $250B industry for fragrance and flavors. Here’s the kicker: the most valuable parts are only a TINY fraction of the overall plant. So, why grow the entire plant just to get the small amount of the most valuble parts?

Chi Botanic overturns 10,000 years of agriculture, by not growing the whole plant. Instead, they take the source plant, convert it to stem cells, and then grow plant cell cultures, which grow 30 times faster than a normal plant, and requires neither the land area nor the pesticides and fertilizer to grow it. Their go to market product is aloe, and then moving towards other plant cells, like raspberry ketones which cost $20,000/kg. Chi Botanic is not just a plant product company–their plant cell culture is a full platform with high throughput robotics, proprietary cell lines, and genetics know-how.

Melanin is the pigment that tans our skin and makes our hair dark, but new research keeps coming out about melanin as a supermaterial and its wide variety of applications: blocking ionizing gamma radiation, acting as organic semiconductors for implantable electronics, and even generating electricity as a solar fuel cell and storing it in rechargable batteries. The primary problem is that melanin is too expensive to make these Industrialapplications scalable.

Avisa Myko is able to produce melanin from a proprietary strain of fungus. Whereas every is able to make it at $400/gram, they can make it at $0.20 per gram. They’ve validated their process at 50L scale while at IndieBio and they’re using the radiation blocking properties of melanin to formulate a suncreen, to replace the sunscreens that are toxic for the marine ecosystem. They are currently looking for partners for turning their melanin into dyes and radiation shielding (think: space).

The world’s food demands are expected to almost double by 2050, at the same time when climate change is stealing our supply our arable land for crop production, and a dearth of fresh water for both human and agricultural uses. Alora confronts these challenges by expanding our imagination, to think beyond these resources as the only way to grow crops.

Alora removes land and freshwater as agricultural constraints, by helping crops that are normally grown on land to grow in the ocean. By removing land and freshwater as key constraints they can grow crops 20X cheaper than on land. The scientific insight came from mangroves and seagrasses that have genes that are highly efficient in managing salt. Alora’s first crop is rice, a crop that feeds over half the world’s population, but is also a notorious methane producer because of the soil bacteria. By growing rice in floating ocean paddies, they will be able to provide food security to the world while also offsetting CO2 emissions

Companies working in precision fermentation have ambitious plans to upcycle organic waste, but most struggle with high costs and poor scalability. They rely on a few engineered bacterial strains and must operate in short batches to keep them healthy and productive. That means stopping and restarting their bioreactors frequently, which introduces downtime and a higher risk for contamination.

Capro-X has pioneered a “microbiome refinery” that uses hundreds of bacterial species in a single fermenter to produce one highly targeted end product. The company’s novel continuous extraction technology enables continuous fermentation of waste into upcycled products for years on end. Currently, Capro-X upcycles acid whey, a difficult dairy byproduct from Greek yogurt production, into caproic acid, a platform molecule used in animal feed, fragrances, flavors, cosmetics, textiles, bioplastics, and more.

Normally, caproic acid is derived from palm oil, an industry that drives rainforest deforestation. Capro-X not only eliminates the need for palm oil but also fixes 9.3 tons of greenhouse gases per ton of caproic acid. Thus, the company addresses three environmental challenges simultaneously.

Capro-X founder and CEO Juan Guzman, PhD worked at startups upcycling algae and brewery waste into biofuels before developing the microbiome refinery during his PhD at Cornell University. With the technology to upcycle a variety of wastes, Capro-X is at the forefront of making precision fermentation cost-effective and scalable.