Archives: Companies

Aqualith

The message from the market is crystal clear: electric vehicles need to be cheaper. Since up to 40% of an electric vehicle is the battery, and in turn 70% of the cost of the battery is in materials, it’s an imperative for the industry to develop cheaper and higher performing materials. Silicon anodes are widely considered the future – ​​they can store far more energy than graphite – but they swell 300% when loading, leading to cracking and rapid degradation. 

Aqualith has solved this problem, with a silicon alloy that only swells 10% – less than graphite swell. Aqualith already has produced dozens of full pouch cells and in six months will deliver samples exceeding 300 cycle life to EV and battery partners. They are 12-16 months from an “A cell” qualification and less than 36 months from commercial production with OEMs / Tier 1s. In addition to their anode materials, Aqualith also has solutions for electrolytes and cobalt-free cathodes. Their electrolytes are non-flammable, high performance, and can handle wide temperatures (meaning they’ll work in cold weather.)

The company is raising now for pre-seed checks.

Transition Biomining

In the $10B copper mining industry, “heap leaching” of waste rock with low concentrations of ore has become a standard practice. Heap leaching works in two ways: 1) sulfuric acid is sprayed on top to trickle through the heaps, and 2) natural microbes in the heaps also help dissolve the copper mineral into solution. It’s been widely noted that the microbes can speed up leaching by 3x, but nobody knows why or how this happens – or how to consistently recreate it.

Transition Biomining is building a platform to control the microbes in heaps, and deliver faster leaching every time. The economic value of improving leaching is enormous – a mere 5% boost can be worth $100 million per mine annually.

Farm Minerals

Today, one ton of conventional fertilizer covers about 20 acres. What if, from the same raw materials, we could make fertilizers that covered 20,000 acres?

Farm Minerals started with biological micronutrient minerals – Zn, Mn, Cu, Fe, and Co. Farmers don’t spend a lot on micros, perhaps only 7% of what they spend on macros, but supplementation with Farm Minerals’ blends, across a wide variety of crops and animal feeds, yielded incredible results– within just a few days and continuing until harvest. This led to their first two blended products, ElevateFeed for animals and ForGrowth, for crops.

Now Farm Minerals is formulating macronutrients by similar processes — Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, as well as Calcium and Sulfur (to make polyhalite blends).

For N fertilizers, this is a green/decarbonized process which is an alternative to Haber-Bosch.

The key to their process is a high-surface-area carbon encapsulation that makes the biominerals dramatically more bioavailable to plant and animal biology.

California Organic

California Organic makes the world’s first green ammonia that is California-certified organic. Already in market and growing rapidly, our organic ammonia is made from farm & ag wastes via a bulk fermentation bioprocess.

Until today, all organic agriculture has used nitrate fertilizers, which have several inefficiencies. Nitrates are in slurries and so can’t go into drip irrigation water systems; for this same reason, they can’t easily be increased in dosage step in step with the growth of the crop, and instead are intermittently applied to soil, which is laborious and imprecise. Most importantly, nitrates are water soluble and flush through the soil and leach out into groundwater. One-third of the nitrates are lost, and cause runoff problems downstream. Another third of the nitrates get eaten by soil microbes, as microbes eat before plants eat. Therefore much more nitrate has to be used, driving up total costs.

Ammonia products, meanwhile, are an immediately available source of nitrogen to crops, so they are preferred across conventional agriculture. They also bind to soil, so don’t flush away. In drip and trickle systems, they can feed the plant exactly when needed. By not drenching their fields, farmers avoid N2) hot moments. But until today, all ammonia products are chemically made – and forbidden in the organic sector.

California Organic invented a bioprocess to convert biowaste from farms and processors into ammonia products that are both decarbonized (green) and organic certified. After a 2-year rigorous evaluation with the CDFA, we began selling our green organic ammonia products in late 2023. Our production facility is over 1 million liters, and we are expanding it in 2024.

We can make our ammonia at up to 20% concentration in water; however, for organic applications, per agreement with the CDFA, we ship the ammonia at 6%.

Cereswaves

Cereswaves’ revolutionary Energy Pang device delivers the world’s first “electrofertilizer,” boosting crop and animal health and growth. Ultra low energy, it works by altering the water in plants and, in turn, transpiration of water through the plant.

The Energy Pang wavelength is so safe, it’s used in medical applications — even on premature infants. Cereswaves is the first in the world to beam this wavelength out at a distance, reaching 50 meters in every direction. The device needs no supply of electricity; it runs on a tiny bit of solar power. The device never needs maintenance. It is safe for farm workers.

Cereswaves has been testing its device with 30 highly-respected farmers in Korea over the last 3 years, repeatedly demonstrating higher yields and dramatically higher phytonutrient density across a wide variety of produce, fruits, and grains. The company has now commercialized with those trusted farmers. The device has also been tested and validated with two leading universities in Korea. It works equally in greenhouses or fields.

Cereswaves has also validated its benefits in henhouses on Ross 308 broilers, demonstrating over 15% improved growth and improved health.

Cereswaves is now partnering with global partners in agriculture and poultry.

Reactosome

Reactosome uses synthetic nuclei as a novel class of gene therapy. This is not a “better” LNP, AAV, etc – This would be peerless in delivering very large DNA payloads ALONG WITH the transcription machinery to transcribe RNAs. As a result, the internalized nuclei can continuously pump out mRNAs into the cytosol. This is important for therapies that need to correct large defective genes or gene circuits (i.e., Duchennes, hemophilia, collagenopathies), for a longer period of time and without the inconvenience of redosing. 

Reactosome is a therapeutic company at its core, but they are also pioneers of the synthetic nucleus who have left academia to direct the engineering efforts towards a synthetic nuclei that can be used in gene therapy. Compared to liposomal delivery, Reactosome’s modality would offer longer duration of effect and at a reduced immunogenicity. And compared to viral and non-viral vectors, Reactosome would have greatly reduced risk of genomic integration since the cargo DNA is contained entirely within the complex.

SpiralWave

Welcome to the era of “Direct Air Utilization.” You all know Direct Air Capture, and you all know Carbon Utilization. In a single step, SpiralWave radically brings down the energy and the costs of transforming the carbon in air and the hydrogen in water into hydrocarbon fuel. Unlike competing DAC and CCUS technologies and traditional reactors relying on vacuums, high temperatures, and pricey catalysts, SpiralWave scales non-thermal plasma at atmospheric pressure indefinitely.

Each SpiralWave’s reactor –  The Microbeam™  – can mine CO2 from the air each day, combining it with hydrogen from river or lake water, resulting in green methanol at cost parity with grey methanol — all at room temperature and ambient pressure. The energy demand is very low; one ton of pure methanol costs 7,000 KWh.

Our second reactor  –  The Nanobeam™  – performs Direct Flue Gas Utilization. We skip the capture, and work directly from your flue gas, whether it’s a low CO2 concentration or high, and including CO mix or not.

SpiralWave carefully fine-tunes the pulse, the frequency, and water microdroplet parameters to bias towards the formation of methanol, as opposed to other hydrocarbon byproducts. This green-methanol is a vital building block for an emerging class of green maritime fuels. To that end, a large global transport, logistics, and energy conglomerate has expressed interest in a large takeoff agreement with SpiralWave.

Xias Bio Limited

The $500 billion personal care and cosmetics industry is alarmingly reliant on raw materials from livestock. The three most important proteins in skincare and haircare products—collagen, keratin, and elastin—typically come from bovine hides, chicken feathers, and meat processing byproducts, respectively. Thus, cosmetics contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and deforestation. With two-thirds of consumers demanding cleaner beauty ingredients, the industry faces immense pressure to replace animal proteins with sustainable, cost-competitive alternatives.

Xias Bio has developed the world’s first molecular platform for creating multi-functional, animal-free proteins. Each one can do the work of three or more animal proteins. Xias licenses its proteins for manufacture to suppliers of global cosmetics, making industry adoption quick and easy. The Xias platform already has 2.6 million different proteins in its library, all of which can be made using the same modular, Lego-like base molecule and fermentation process. 

Founded in Glasgow, Scotland by Dr. David Harvey, Dr. Faadil Fawzy, and Alister Minty, Xias brings over  20 years combined experience in protein design. The company has licensed its multi-function proteins to major leaders in the cosmetics industry. Though currently focused on cosmetics, Xias aims to replace animal proteins throughout the bioeconomy, from pharmaceuticals and therapeutics to AgTech and the food industry.

Unibaio

Farmers spend nearly $230 billion every year on herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers designed to increase crop yields. However, most of these chemicals are leached into the environment rather than absorbed by crops, causing pest resistance to biocides, biodiversity loss, and a litany of public health impacts. Somehow, the world needs to wind down agrochemical use while expanding food production to feed an additional 1.7 billion people by 2050.

Unibaio has developed a natural microparticle that can supercharge biological crop protectants by enabling them to penetrate plants more efficiently. Unibaio’s tech can also be used to reduce the amount of conventional chemical products needed by up to 80% while retaining their full impact on crop yields. Whether they make biological or synthetic crop protectants, manufacturers can mix Unibaio particles into their products to improve their margins and minimize harmful runoff.

Unibaio was co-founded by Claudia Casalongué, PhD, economist Matias Figliozzi, and Vera Alvarez, PhD. Their team of five has nearly 100 years of combined experience in crop biology and material sciences. Currently, they are running pilot programs with a top fertilizer manufacturer and a company pioneering biological herbicides. Unibaio is proving that the world can grow enough nutritious food for billions of people without compromising human and environmental health.

Terra Bioindustries

Discarded food accounts for 8-10% of greenhouse gas emissions and costs the global economy $940 billion per year. Upcycling surplus food is therefore critical to decarbonizing the food supply chain and curbing its massive appetite for water and deforested land.   

Terra Bioindustries has developed a negative-emissions platform for upcycling brewer’s spent grain, a beer byproduct that is often difficult to sell. The company uses a low-energy enzymatic process to separate it into edible sugars and proteins which are then sold to food manufacturers and precision fermentation companies. The process relies on commercial equipment found in most food processing facilities, meaning adoption is inexpensive. 

Today, Terra sources spent grain from microbreweries and one multinational brewer. The company has also partnered with a global food processor and a baked goods conglomerate to bring its upcycled ingredients to market. In addition, Terra is working with a major ethanol producer to upcycle spent corn using the same technology. 

Terra co-founders Steve George, PhD, and Ricardo Martinez have over 20 combined years of experience as bioprocess engineers. Beer byproducts are just the beginning for their team. There’s another 1+ billion tons of discarded food waiting to be upcycled into valuable calories.  

Earnest Agriculture

To feed a global population of 9.7 billion people by 2050, farmers need to produce 50% more calories than they do today. However, large-scale farms rely on synthetic fertilizers, which degrade their soil and release more CO2 emissions than global aviation and shipping combined.  

Earnest Agriculture has designed a microbial consortium that protects crops against diseases, pests, and drought while improving soil health. Applied as a seed coating, it’s a triple whammy that can boost yields by 7x, reduce synthetic chemical use, and make crops more resilient to climate change. Earnest sources its patented microbes from natural prairies and uses a machine learning algorithm to formulate a microbe consortium that works in diverse climates and soil conditions. By focusing on the $570 billion livestock feed market first and crops for human consumption second, Earnest will minimize regulatory friction and get to market faster. 

The grandchildren of farmers, co-founders Gabe Price, PhD, and Eddy Mejia launched Earnest in 2019. They currently have a paid pilot with CD Ford and Sons and field trials with the University of Illinois, Grand Farms, and Winfield United. A win for farmers, soils, and our climate, Earnest probiotics will play an important role in global food security.

Carbon Bridge

Maritime shipping, aviation, and trucking will account for at least a tenth of global CO2 emissions by 2030 and cannot be electrified anytime soon. To meet EU emissions standards, cargo operators are already ordering methanol-powered ships. However, green methanol is currently produced using energy-intensive processes, resulting in a greenish fuel that can’t compete with oil on price—which is key to rapid adoption.

CarbonBridge is developing a low-heat, low-pressure microbial process that upcycles carbon dioxide and methane into liquid methanol using a patent-pending bioreactor. Here’s the kicker: CarbonBridge can source those gasses inexpensively from over 16,000 US wastewater treatment facilities that normally burn them off. Easily stored and transported with existing fuel infrastructure, methanol can also be upgraded into aviation fuel, diesel, and plastics like polyurethane.

CarbonBridge was founded by entrepreneur Manu Pillai, engineer William Koutny, and biologist Sophia Xu. The company will decarbonize heavy transportation starting in 2025 by unlocking energy from plentiful wastewater feeds.

BioMetallica

Over 53 million tons of electronics are discarded every year, wasting $57 billion worth of recoverable metals. Typically incinerated, this e-waste releases toxic fumes, causing people serious health problems. Only 17% of e-waste is recycled because existing methods are too expensive, energy-intensive, and pollutive. 

BioMetallica has developed the first eco-friendly biotechnology for recovering palladium, platinum, and rhodium at room temperature, with zero wastewater, at a competitive cost. These palladium group metals (PMGs) are rare. Indeed, one kilogram of rhodium can fetch over $145,000 in commodity markets. 

BioMetallica uses genetically modified bacteria, cultivated in bioreactors, to produce biogenic chemicals that separate PMGs—and soon, gold and silver—from e-waste and spent catalytic converters. Co-founder KwaDwo (Joe) Konadu Ansah-Antwi, PhD, a repeat entrepreneur, partnered with Salman Karim, PhD, who developed the technology at the National University of Singapore, to turn e-waste into wealth.

Today, BioMetallica has a strategic partnership and an active pilot test with BR Metals Pte Ltd, the largest PMG recycler in Southeast Asia, and is currently negotiating another pilot project with an Indonesian tin mining outfit to recycle their mine tailings. The team aims to divert at least 1 million tons of e-waste from ending up at landfills over the next five to ten years.

Afynia

Globally, one in ten women will suffer from endometriosis, a painful and debilitating gynecological condition. On average, women don’t get a proper diagnosis for five to twelve years after the onset of symptoms because, until now, the only reliable way to do so was via laparoscopic surgery that can cost over $20,000 and require three months of recovery. Moreover, endometriosis symptoms overlap with 25 other conditions, meaning undiagnosed women face years of costly trial-and-error treatment. 

Afynia has created the first and only patented blood test for diagnosing endometriosis early. It returns a result in days, not years, and will be offered through clinics and home collection kits beginning in 2024. Based on decades of research by co-founders Dr. Lauren Foster, PhD, and Dr. Jocelyn Wessels, PhD, former academics at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, the endometriosis test is just the beginning. Afynia is building a digital women’s health platform that will provide diagnostics, virtual care, and prescription deliveries for endometriosis and other conditions. 

For too long, the world has normalized and undertreated chronic pelvic pain. With Afynia, women have the opportunity to become full-fledged partners in their own healthcare.

FREZENT Biological Solutions

Over 32 million cancer survivors face the risk of recurrence. Patients are told they are “cancer-free” only to discover that a few undetectable cancer cells survived initial treatment and have begun to multiply.  

FREZENT is developing a novel class of bispecific antibodies for targeting dormant cancer cells that have survived chemotherapy and may cause recurrence. Their approach is to block metabolism in dormant cancer cells to prevent their reactivation and survival. The technology is based on the academic research of founder Dr. Natasha Shtraizent. She started the company when her mother was diagnosed with recurrent cancer and was joined by her co-founder Lina Freage-Kahn, just months after Lina lost her uncle to lymphoma. 

The team is currently focused on monoclonal antibody discovery and proof-of-concept studies and is rapidly moving towards preclinical development in cancer animal models.  FREZENT is backed by a strong advisory board of leaders in oncology and pharmacological drug development. Together, they are creating a future where long-lasting remission is the reality for all cancer survivors.

Aequor Inc.

At least 1.7 billion people worldwide rely on contaminated drinking water, resulting in over 500,000 deaths per year. Concerningly, bacteria have grown resistant to standard water treatment chemicals like chlorine, which can no longer kill slimes (“biofilms”) that protect harmful bacteria and fungi and attach them to surfaces in our water infrastructure. 

Aequor discovered marine microbes that produce molecules that eliminate bacterial slime in minutes, which the company now synthesizes at scale. Applied in water treatment facilities, Aequor’s liquid concentrate can reduce conventional chemical usage by 90%, lower energy usage by up to 15%, and prevent slime from clogging filters and causing shutdowns. 

Co-founded by CEO Marilyn Bruno, Ph.D., J.D., and CSO Cynthia Burzell, Ph.D.​, a marine and medical microbiologist, Aequor has proven its efficacy in the field. In testing with NASA, its concentrate was 99.99% effective at killing resistant bacteria and bacterial slime for 15 months in the water reuse system used on board the International Space Station. Aequor has the first bio-inspired technology that can reduce the costs and environmental impact of water treatment while enabling billions more people to access safe, affordable drinking water.

Upside Foods

According to the IPCC, agricultural practices in all countries account for 18% of the total anthropogenic GHG emissions. The fecal run-off from animal agriculture pollutes our waterways, and puts the human race at risk with antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Replacing livestock would put a huge impact on our planet.

That’s why Upside Foods was the first to use cellular agriculture to grow the meat you love, in the lab instead of a farm. Upside was the poster child of cellular agriculture when it was hot in 2015, promising 90% carbon reduction compared to traditional factory farms. This is not a plant substitute; this is real meat. Smaller land footprint, fewer carbon emissions, none of the murder, and all of the flavor.

NotCo

For decades, food R&D has been dedicated to make foods that are tasty, cheap, and profitable. In Matias Muchnik’s words, “that’s why the pinnacle of food R&D is a freaking Dorito.” That’s why the team at NotCo wanted to steer the next wave of food R&D to make it healthy, delicious, and affordable, focusing largely on plant-based foods. Why? First, it’s healthier and more sustainable. Second, Millennials’ preferences are driving this market and have already carved out $15 billion of growth.

NotCo is on a mission to take animals out of food production while not compromising on taste and nutrition. Their animal-free dairy and meat products are powered by Giuseppe – an AI platform with embedded food science to generate healthy and accessible products from plants. The company analyzes at a molecular level to indicate which plants must be combined in order to replicate their taste, texture, color and aroma, enabling manufacturers to discover a new source of fiber, calcium and proteins from the vegetables. NotCo delivers unprecedented experiences in milk, mayo, ice cream, plant-based meats; all tasting like the real thing.

Alkali Labs

Oil wells are not the first thing you think of when you think of lithium sources, but pumping oil out of the ground actually requires a lot of water, either to fracture the rock or to push out the oil of old wells. That water is often locally sourced from deep underground, and has to be properly disposed of and reinjected back down. Coincidentally, this water also contains a lot of lithium, and is a ripe opportunity for on-shore lithium mining, if there were a safe and non-toxic approach to extracting the lithium…

Alkali labs was founded by a duo of synthetic biologists, Jacob Roberts and Luis Valencia, to engineer a scalable, decentralized method to extract lithium from oil field brine using safe, biological processes. They can sequester the lithium (or other minerals of interest) in ways that are not economically feasible–nor environmentally allowable–with conventional methods. Alkali’s solution is to tackle these challenges from the ground up, starting with the most scalable microbes, and engineering scalable bioprocesses on top. 

VIA Fuels

Ethanol may be 10% of every gas tank, but the economics of making ethanol have become marginal. VIA Fuels enables ethanol plants to use their existing infrastructure and feedstocks to make much more valuable and versatile drop-in, carbon neutral fuels.

Unlike ethanol, VIA Fuels can be blended at higher rates to create renewable fuels for use in today’s engines due to a 30% greater energy density. With eligibility for Alternative Fuel Credits, VIA can target transportation decarbonization at the fuel source enabling the decarbonization of vehicles on the road today. Lastly, they are simple to include in jet fuel, while ethanol must undergo an expensive and inefficient conversion.

Karma Biotech

Karma Biotech is an oncology company targeting solid tumors, starting with colorectal cancer. Their technology aims to deliver cytokines and other biologicals, such as IL-15, specifically to tumor and metastatic sites, avoiding the dangers of systemic toxicity. This localized IL-15 will turn cold tumors hot, allowing the body to clear the cancer. 

The founders at Karma rationally designed super stable LNPs that are effective at delivering both DNA and/or RNA without electroporation. Their proprietary LNPs efficiently transfect macrophages in the spleen – which then home to tumor sites and produce the payload (e.g., IL-15) at the tumor microenvironment. This is one of the most elegant methods we’ve seen at fighting hard-to-penetrate solid tumors. While they’re quickly advancing through their own internal drug program, they can also generate some early revenue by partnering out with other pharma companies who have already been impressed by Karma’s latest data package (summer 2023).

Carbonade

Carbon capture, utilization and storage has a dirty little secret that divides its proponents and opponents: capturing CO2 out of the air is cheap, but then releasing it from its capture solvent into a purified tank is up to 10x more energetically and financially costly. This is one of the reasons why opponents argue we’ll never remove enough carbon cheaply enough to be economically viable. 

Carbonade can put this argument to rest, because they’ve figured out how to skip the expensive “releasing” step, and go straight to utilization. How? Because their electrochemical cell operates at the lowest ever recorded energy required for “cracking the CO2 molecule.” The technology comes out of Professor Ronny Neumann’s lab at the Weizmann Institute, where they’ve developed a proprietary electrocatalyst that transforms the CO2 while it’s still in the capture solvent. So in one step, Carbonade captures the CO2 from ambient air into its solvent, and immediately converts it to a usable carbon substrate (e.g., carbon monoxide), while also producing green hydrogen, all without having to purify the CO2 and ship it to another “utilization” provider. This is all to make products like sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) for jets, a topic the CEO knows a thing or two about, as a retired F-16 pilot.

Lillianah Technologies

Four years ago, Ben Slotnick was on the technical evaluation team for one of the largest carbon-capture-and-storage projects in the world, pumping CO2 under the North Sea. He came to the conclusion that spending over $1 billion in capex before sequestering any CO2 was the wrong path. And it was the wrong way to use our oceans. 

Lillianah is an extremely capex-light system, doing natural phytoplankton dispersal in the Louisiana bayou. In just six days, these phytoplankton multiply 5,000 times, storing and sinking organic carbon off the continental shelf. Each daily phytoplankton dispersal can store 1,000 tons of CO2. What’s more, Lillianah’s data shows a sudden revival of the hypoxic dead zones in these same waters, restoring marine life. Plans are underway in two additional locations.

ViAn Therapeutics

Vascular endothelial Growth factor, also known as VEGF, is primarily responsible for forming and maintaining new blood vessels. Under abnormal conditions, especially in the eye, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy, it causes the formation of abnormal blood vessels, which can bleed, leak, and eventually lead to scar formation and vision loss. Anti-VEGF therapy, which is administered by injection into the back of the eye, is the standard of care for severe retinal diseases, especially wet AMD. These therapeutics command a market over $12B today just for the eye alone, but those patents will soon expire, and pharma is scrambling to remix and extend their existing patents. 

ViAn Therapeutics has patented a highly potent and stable anti-angiogenic peptide that is already found in our body. The peptide is so small compared to the standard-of-care antibodies, it can be developed as a simple topical eye drop for ophthalmology indications. Not only will this enable a larger segment of AMD patients to be treated much earlier in the disease (and thereby avoid progression to severe disease), this opens up a vast market opportunity in mild to moderate diabetic retinopathies and other retinal vein occlusive diseases where a topical treatment will be highly preferred over retinal injections. ViAn Tx has already demonstrated high penetrance into the back of the eye as an topical formulation, and are putting together a pre-IND package now to further prove its safety and efficacy in rabbits.

Bloom Labs

Despite a decade of innovation into new eco-friendly textile fibers, none of them work on the huge melt-spun fiber machines that enable low costs. 70% of the fibers used by the apparel industry are made by melt-spinning. The result is that virtually all fiber innovation is hindered by costs 2x to 3x higher than petroleum-based yarns. 

Bloom Labs is the first startup to enable a recyclable fiber which is meltable and spinnable on traditional machines. This is a huge innovation that could help textile and apparel companies finally use eco-fibers across their entire portfolio of products. Bloom Labs’ fibers are recyclable because they are converted to pellets from a waste protein, of which there is nearly infinite supply. Bloom is funded by the National Science Foundation, and the United Soybean Board, and are now in discussions with NASA to create a circular packaging material that can be 3D printed for reuse to enable the circular economy in space. 

TippingPoint Biosciences

A wide number of cancers exhibit misregulated genome packaging at the chromatin level. If chromatin that should be tightly condensed, becomes loosely packed (or vice-versa), the normal brakes on cell growth aren’t operant, leading to uncontrolled cell growth. Being able to regulate and control the chromatin state has been a high-value target for oncology. 

Coming from Geeta Narlikar’s lab at UCSF, TippingPoint has a proprietary platform that makes genome packaging states druggable. Specifically perturbing a disease causing chromatin state is difficult with targeted drug discovery platforms because they don’t provide enough biological context and the alternative of phenotypic screening can be incredibly resource intensive. TippingPoint’s platform addresses these limitations by recreating the biological context of cancer driving chromatin states in a controlled, cell-free environment. Instead of targeting a single factor, TippingPoint’s platform focuses on disrupting or restoring the unique protein-protein networks that package cell genomes, using phase-separated condensates as a readout. Unlike individual factors that may have similar functions in both healthy and diseased cells, the DNA packaging networks in cancer cells are significantly different, and can be exploited to enhance drug specificity and limit drug resistance.

Re-Fresh Global

In America alone, an estimated 12 million tons of textile waste – equivalent to 85% of all textiles – end up in landfills on a yearly basis, because recycling is not trivial. There are almost two dozen methods to recycle specific fiber types, ONLY if the garment waste happens to be 100% of a single fiber. These are scaling very slowly, because almost all the waste is highly diverse, with blended fibers and different materials used in the same garment.  

Re-Fresh offers circularity to mixed textile waste, by repurposing them into a variety of second lives, such as bioethanol, textile pulp, and nanocellulose. Re-Fresh uses proprietary chemical and mechanical processes to transform textile waste into high-quality materials at scale. Furthermore, their methods scale down to medium-sized businesses, reaching customers who’ve never had the resources to install recycling systems. In 2021, Re-Fresh conducted a pilot with the city of Kfar Saba in Israel, where they collected used textile waste from a hospital in the city. In less than two weeks, Re-Fresh demonstrated that they could reuse 38% of the collected deadstock and a full 60% were upcycled.

Kolibri

For billions of people, cell and gene therapies offer the possibility of curing incurable diseases, but access to these life saving treatments feels out of reach as large scale manufacturing remains one of the biggest bottlenecks in producing these game changing solutions. These therapies can cost as much as $3.5M per patient and 30% of clinical trials are being terminated, not because of efficacy but because of cell manufacturing limits. Kolibri is reimagining the way mammalian cells are grown to unlock the industrial potential of these treatments. Unlike traditional methods, they use acoustic waves to move cells around in a gentle manner which provides a low shear optimal environment for cells to thrive in as it is actually much closer to the environment found in our bodies. Their patented bioreactors show a 10x increase in yield while lowering production cost by as much as 50 times, therefore unlocking patient access to these much needed treatments. By using sound, Kolibri has the potential to both increase the industry’s market size and the number of people who have access to these much needed treatments.

Kresko RNAtech

We all know that beneficial nutritional elements are lost when fresh food is processed. But something is lost even in the first half hour of being picked from the stems. Present are supernutrients which rapidly degrade if not eaten immediately – in all our fresh fruits, veggies, herbs and roots, and even in milk. 

Kresko is the first company in the world to isolate these supernutrients, discover their functionality, and stabilize them into extracts. These supernutrients are not broken down by digestion, and lab assays show remarkable impact on many of our cell types. Some are anti-inflammatory, some alter how lipids are stored, and whether we burn sugar or turn it into fat. Some reduce cortisol, some boost serotonin. They can improve and regulate our gut health. 

Cell BioEngines

Discovery of CAR-T cell-based therapies has transformed the treatment landscape for blood cancer patients. Still, the process to achieve this is “one patient – one batch”, limiting manufacturing scalability with high patient-to-patient variability. Moreover, complicated supply chain issues and associated high cost add to the hurdles of providing access to a larger population. On the other hand, the final product is often a non-specific mixed bag of cell states inhibiting its overall functional potency and durability, particularly when providing treatments for solid cancers. As a clinical-stage biotech company, Cell BioEngines is addressing these bottlenecks by utilizing healthy umbilical cord blood as a single stable source, high quality raw material to obtain ‘off-the-shelf’ true stem cells. Their first clinical-stage product is an expanded hematopoietic stem cell therapy to use as a replacement tissue in bone marrow transplantation. Their proprietary manufacturing platform technology, Stem-SPACE, allows Cell BioEngines to also produce a broad arsenal of rare, highly potent clinical-grade immune cells for dosing 10’s and 100’s of patients from 1 cord blood unit at 10X lower cost. Their lead pre-clinical-stage immune cell product is a one-size-fits-all yet personalized cell-based therapeutic vaccine, composed of allogeneic dendritic cell type 1 (cDC1).

Calder Biosciences

Viruses have evolved to become shapeshifters that can evade and distract our immune system by hiding some of their most vulnerable sites. History has shown that pandemics are not only lethal but also inevitable. Currently, the vaccines we know best poorly protect against pandemics and other viral outbreaks and leave many at-risk populations unprotected. By combining structure-based design as part of a novel manufacturing process, Calder’s unique 3D-Vaxlock technology generates molecular staples that lock vaccines into their most potent shape. Their initial focus is on generating a universal flu vaccine that protects against all seasonal strains and an RSV vaccine specifically for the elderly. With this platform, they have the ability to create treatments that better protect against life-threatening diseases with exceptional safety, efficacy, and durability. Calder’s next generation vaccines will prevent severe disease and deaths, alleviate a substantial burden on the healthcare system, and allow billions of people to lead healthy lives.

Nukoko

For centuries, chocolate has been a staple ingredient and sweet treat in diets all over the world, but its future is in trouble. Chocolate production has long been associated with significant carbon emissions and deforestation, with a looming supply deficit predicted by 2030. To save chocolate, Nukoko is transforming the industry with its sustainable and healthy range of cocoa-free chocolate products. Their innovative solution uses precision fermentation to recreate chocolate flavors without relying on increasingly rare cocoa beans, making them the first ‘bean to bar’ maker to utilize this cutting-edge technology. With their proprietary platform, Nukoko can create chocolate using locally sourced beans from temperate regions.

CroBio

In discussions surrounding climate change, there is often a focus on the negative impacts of high carbon levels in the atmosphere. However, it’s important to recognize that carbon itself is not our adversary. Instead, CroBio is leading the charge against years of unsustainable practices by restoring the balance of carbon between the soil and the atmosphere. With their innovative technology, they introduce cellulose-producing bacteria directly to plant roots. This process boosts carbon levels in the soil while also increasing water retention by more than 20X. By harnessing the power of the carbon cycle, CroBio’s advanced biotech solution enables the large-scale capture and sequestration of carbon emissions. This approach not only revitalizes soil health but also fosters biodiversity, improves food security, and paves the way for a more sustainable future for everyone.

Palate Therapeutics

Sustainable weight management involves adopting long-term lifestyle changes, including balanced nutrition and a focus on overall health. Traditional dieting methods and current drugs prioritize short-term weight loss and do not address the core issue of weight gain—the consumption of refined carbohydrates and sugar-laden foods. Palate Therapeutics is a new type of therapeutic company that aims to address the growing prevalence of metabolic diseases by reducing sugar consumption.Their cutting-edge technology utilizes oligonucleotides in an oral gene therapy that targets taste bud cells on the tongue, temporarily altering how sweet foods taste and are metabolized. By suppressing appetites towards sugary foods, Palate’s approach offers a promising solution to combat obesity and associated health issues.

Care Constitution

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth usage has been up over 500%, yet little progress has been made to advance this critical technology. While a video call can offer unprecedented access to your physician, it is subjective by nature and, in its current form, cannot offer much in the way of diagnosis and accurate physical assessment. With Inteleclinic, Care Constitution’s proprietary software system, clinicians and physicians have the potential to remotely evaluate their patients in a quantitative manner with diagnostic capability that is even better than an in-person visit. With their initial focus on evaluating neuromuscular disorders, clinicians can quantify minute physical changes in patient’s faces and body movements that can be incredibly beneficial for clinical trial patient recruitment and retention. Additionally, Inteleclinic allows more complex data collection for individuals in remote locations, so patients do not have to travel to clinic sites. This increased accessibility allows for more robust enrollment, especially for diverse populations that have social barriers to healthcare, those that are too sick to come to the clinic, or those that live far from clinical research sites. Care Constitution is poised to deliver on its mission to deliver better access to quality healthcare for all.

Zymochem

Some of the refined products from petroleum are chemicals that make it into our modern world as polymers (imagine plastics), but the degradability of these polymers are well documented. One such synthetic polymer are super absorbent polymers (SAP). The global market of SAPs alone is $9 billion, for use in disposable personal hygiene products like diapers.

Zymochem is making bio-SAP from lignocellulosic feedstock in a fully integrated process. This starts with de novo microbe design to make inherently scalable microbial catalysts, equipped with non-novel enzymatic chemistries. These biosynthetic microbes are designed to produce from renewable feedstock in high yields, and with little or no use of oxygen.

They’re able to make drop-in replacements for novel chemicals not accessible through petrochemical processes, including biopolymers, bio-monomers and fatty molecules. Bio-SAP is their first product, destined to make the world’s first truly biodegradable diaper.

BioFluff

With recent bans on real fur going into effect across the EU, United States, and beyond, and a decline in customer acceptance of plastic-based furs, luxury brands are actively seeking novel sustainable fur alternatives to animal and synthetic furs. BioFluff is working on developing a cost-competitive, biodegradable, and high quality alternative to both.

BioFluff is the world’s first completely plant-based fur targeting the luxury clothing market. Their fur is plastic-free, GMO-free, and vegan, sourced from organic renewable fiber plants – no pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, petrochemicals or unsustainable raw-oil derivatives are used.

Their patented process provides a drop in solution to existing industries to produce already 14k square feet of material in our manufacturing location in Italy.

FluoSphera

Drug development costs over $2 billion per drug with a failure rate of 90% because in vitro methods do not mimic the systemic organization of the human body and animal models are too different from Humans. As a result, the limitations of in vitro testing reduce the probability to develop safe and efficient drugs for patients needing them and prevent an efficient transition toward animal-free drug discovery.

FluoSphera is developing the first liquid microphysiological systems (MPS) ever made to revolutionize drug discovery. The MPS of FluoSphera recapitulates the complex organization of the human body in vitro by mimicking the communications between multiple human organs. These smart tools thus predict the effects of candidate drugs much better, even before they reach the first patient, to stop missing the most promising drugs.

With this powerful technology, FluoSphera helps to increase the success rate in clinical trials while proposing superior alternatives to animal experimentation. 

The EVERY Company (fka Clara Foods)

The EVERY Company brews real animal protein without using a single animal — starting with the world’s first suite of animal-free egg proteins. Eggs the beloved breakfast staple has broad industry usage, delivering 20+ critical performance, flavor, and nutrition functionalities such as pH stability, tenderization and beyong enabling a $213B market in the foodand beverage industry. Their first product is an animal-free pepsin, which was launched in 2020, and is already selling across three continents. The EVERY Company has created a strong partnership ecosystem to truly compete with animal protein head on––a first in the alternative protein space––by partnering with ingredients giant, Ingredion (NYSE: INGR) for global distribution and ABInBev (NYSE: BUD), the world’s largest fermentation company, for production.

Endless West

After a whiskey is fermented and distilled, it has to undergo an aging process, which is arguably the most expensive part of the process. The alcohol sits in contact with specially chosen wooden barrels whose wood contain compounds that are transferred to the whiskey, giving it exquisite flavor along with its color. Now imagine the same unique flavor profiles but for every spirit: wine, soju, sake, etc.

Endless West can simulate this process by analyzing the molecules that give spirits their flavors and aroma, and then synthesize their own “molecular” spirits, without the need for grapes, rice, or wood. Their first product, Glyph, is the first whiskey ever to be crafted ‘note by note’, using molecules (or, flavor and aroma notes) extracted in their purest form from more efficient sources in nature.

Geltor

Geltor is a conscious, biodesign company that produces advanced proteins sustainably and without animals, to service industries as diverse as beauty, nutrition, and food and beverage.

By combining precision fermentation and synthetic biology, Geltor is producing high quality, bioactive collagen and elastin products that don’t rely on animals for production, and don’t sacrifice on performance. Whether it’s a cosmetic or a food and beverage application – these high performance, advanced designer proteins are being efficiently produced by industrial microbes engineered by Geltor’s team.

MycoWorks

MycoWorks is a biotechnology company founded by artists with the mission to create a platform for the highest quality materials using Fine Mycelium . Drawing on over two decades of pioneering research and innovation by our creative founding team, MycoWorks’ proprietary Fine Mycelium platform has enabled a new class of premium, non-animal materials that are the next evolution in mycelium. The company mission is to using the tools of biotechnology, manufacturing excellence and creative, master craftsmanship to grow the future of materials.

MycoWorks is at the forefront of the movement to bring circularity and sustainability to the fashion industry. They recently annouced a landmark partnership with Hermès for a new material Sylvania, a hybrid of nature and biotechnology. Fine Mycelium™, the genesis of Sylvania, is produced in the MycoWorks facility. It is then tanned and finished in France by the Hermès tanners to further refine its strength and durability, and shaped into a luxury travel bag at the workshops by the Hermès craftspeople. The company’s flagship product Reishi™ — a non-animal, non-plastic leather that performs like cowhide — designed as a proprietary woven cellular microstructure inspired from animal leather. Reishi™ is available for sale for stakeholders across the textiles industry from running shoes to the runway.

Sun Genomics

It all begins in the gut. We know that a balanced gut microbiome is key to a healthy (and happy) life. Probiotics, ingestible products that contain healthy bacteria and yeast, are available for people to buy and help with their digestive issues. But not all probiotics are created equal.

Sun Genomics found that an individual’s genome can help identify which probiotic strains are best for the person. By creating personalized probiotics, the company can eliminate the guesswork that’s involved with buying probiotics off the shelf and help people regain control of their health. Customers of all ages (babies, tots, adults) can get a whole genome sequencing of their gut microflora now, and get custom-tailored probiotics sent to their door right away, with the Floré product by Sun Genomics.

Sun Genomics has also launched a new academic collaboration focused on understanding the potential link between the gut microbiome and the Autism Spectrum Disorder

Prellis Biologics

One of the biggest challenges of printing organs is replicating the tiny micro-vascularuture, which is nearly impossible to print with traditional 3D printers. No matter how advanced, you cannot cheat physics and fluid dynamics to quickly print something a nanometer thick.

So, to say that Prellis is like the laser printer of 3D printing is not so far off the mark: Instead of extruding bio ‘ink’ like traditional 3D printers do, Prellis invented a laser-assisted 3D organ printing system that can be controlled with light to build organs nanometers at a time (but scalably). They have the fastest high-resolution bioprinter in the world, 100 times faster than their nearest competitor, and their resolution is 10-100x better than any other bioprinting system.

They’re now creating living tissues in 3D to mimic biological functions that can be used in therapeutic development. In 2017, they injected their mini lymph nodes with Zika virus, and it subsequently produced antibodies for passive immunity against Zika. Their Externalized Immune System (EXIS) platform represents the first use of synthetic human tissue for de novo therapeutic antibody discovery.

Prime Roots

Killing an animal and eating its flesh is not the only way to gain protein. Now more than ever, we need alternatives to conventional animal farming and fishing—not just because of animal welfare, but for human and environmental health. What’s happening now is not sustainable.

Prime Roots uses fungi as a complete protein source which acts as a seafood alternative. Described as healthful, protein-rich, sustainable, ethical, and delicious, the company is working to help people reimagine meat and seafood with fungi, that has the proper taste, texture, and nutrition. The product has already been tested with over 10,000 potential consumers, and their full product line is hitting markets and available for purchase on their website.

Calyx

Traditional commercial gas sensors lack a middle ground: They are either really expensive and bulky, or they are small but lack sensitivity. There is a technical trilemma between specificity, sensitivity and, durability, and the devleopment of new chemistry-based sensors often have long development times and scalability problems.

Calyx uses a bio-based sensor that unlocks new opporutinies for indsutries that traditionally rely on chemistry-based sensors. Viruses are used to detect the analytes, and which changes the output of a colorimetric chip. This has high specificity, high sensitivity, and durability. Calyx’s platform has over a trillion receptors in one protein library, so with short development cycles, they can churn out new virus-based sensors for new customers in no time. Since 2018 their solutoins have been validated by major industry players, resulting in 5 paid pilots. Their go to market product will be targeting the poultry industry for ammonia monitoring and has already been demonstrated to outperform the state of the art.

Catalog Technologies

“The Cloud” is basically just someone else’s computer, taking up acres of land and consuming cities’ worth of power, and billions of dollars in cost of ownership. It generates more carbon every year than the entire airline industry. The amount of data we produce each year as a species is growing exponentially, but our storage capacity is not. Hard drives not getting smaller–we’ve reached the physical limits of that. There are also serious concerns about the archival materials in the long term. Hard drives need to be replaced every 5 years, and magnetic tape can maybe last 30 years.

Catalog Technologies might be the solution to that. Their writer can write over a terabit of data onto DNA in a single day. The system is basically a printer, but instead of ink, it’s DNA. Not only can this store DNA, but it opens up new possiblities through which we interact with archival data: If you have millions of copies of your information (as DNA) you can operate on all of them in massively parallel ways.

Filtricine

Metabolism is what keeps us going. But for cancer cells that have abnormally high rates of growth, this is doubly true. The founders at Filtricine has found that cancers require key nutrients that healthy cells do not require.

Filtricine developed a targeted nutrient deprivation (TND) therapy for treating a broad spectrum of cancer. This enables doctors and medical care professionals to exploit metabolic dependencies to stop the spread of cancer without the use of drug substances. The product now a two step cancer therapy, the first step is a meal plan that excludes the key nutrients, which the Filtricine team has shown to slow down drugs in 4 different cancer types. The second step is a dialysis with a formulated fluid that removes the targeted nutrients from the body. They have already completed pre-clinical studies to get FDA approval.

Finless Foods

Finless Foods is committed to creating a future where the ocean thrives. Co-founders Michael Selden and Brian Wyrwas founded the company to create delicious, healthy, and accessible plant-based and cell-cultured seafood alternatives.

Finless Foods offers options for all palates and dietary preferences, providing consumers with a range of responsibly produced food products to diversify their daily habits and pave the way toward a more sustainable future and healthier ocean.

Joywell Foods

Ten years ago, a founder at Joywell was researching ways to help his grandmother, a cancer patient, enjoy foods after chemotherapy wrecked her taste buds. He came across a molecule called miraculin, a protein that temporarily tricks your taste buds into thinking sour is actually sweet.

Over the last several years, people have been throwing “flavor tripping parties” that revolve around popping a tablet of miraculin and subsequently trying sour foods, only to then perceive them as sweet. Joywell took this idea turn make the future of artificial sweeteners, made not from carbs, but from proteins. Today, Joywell mass produces this protein using a bit of genetic engineering and microbial fermentation, they’ll be partnering with CPG companies to push out a wide variety of products to replace not only natural but artificial sugars. Watch out, stevia!

Mendel Health

True interoperability of the health care data system means not just one hospital sharing data with another, it means integrating all clinical trial notes and physician notes. Keyword tagging isn’t enough.

Mendel A.I. is the world’s best system for reading natural language — specific to healthcare. Their system turns unstructured data into structured data that can then be mined or searched and associated. One can imagine that what’s natural for a clinician to write varies highly by medical field and geography. Mendel is partnered with Efax — faxes are still the most common patient data transfer system in healthcare — to interpret instantly all medical faxes.

NewWave Foods Inc.

Shrimp is the number one seafood consumed in the US and we import over $7 billion annually. But all of this comes with big health, social, and sustainability problems. Shrimp’s carbon footprint is nearly 10 times higher than that of beef’s. And it is very likely that you have eaten shrimp that has been caught and peeled with slave labor. No, not last decade–we’re talking last year.

New Wave Foods is bringing a sustainable shrimp to a plate near you. Using seaweed and other plant-based ingredients, their shrimp alternative has the taste and texture of real shrimp to any dish with shrimp served hot. They did this by analyzing the shrimp’s texture and elasticity at the molecular level to create the a high performance matrix. Together all this lets them create a superior product without compromising taste and nutrition.

Prolific Machines

An excerpt from Arvind Gupta’s “Five Insights from investing in Prolific Machines“:

The heart of Prolific Machines’ approach to reinventing the assembly line for food is rooted in identifying the most expensive drivers of cell culture. Cost analysis shows that by weight, growth factors are by far the most expensive part of growing food – or anything really – in culture. So Deniz and his team had devised a novel way to eliminate the need for these growth factors in mammalian cell culture. What that means is it would theoretically enable cells to grow at the cost of electricity and basic nutrients like sugar.

There are many approaches to make growth factors cheaper. But none that I know of to eliminate their need in culture altogether. That is what Prolific was proposing to do (exactly how will be revealed after the final bricks in their patent wall are placed). But if eliminating growth factors is possible, the impact on humanity would be enormous.

Protera Biosciences

Consumers demand sustainable and healthier food ingredients to replace the chemical additives that we can’t even pronounce. Among these are the preservatives, texturizers, and emulsifiers that are buried deep in the ingredients label. The alternative is to find and produce proteins to replace these chemicals, but the bottleneck is the identification and design.

Protera Biosciences is advancing the science of protein engineering to address critical challenges in food, agriculture, the environment, and human health. They have a database containing billions of protein sequences from GRAS organisms, and screen them for the top variants, which are then produced in using yeast fermentation. Protera is optimizing the full protein engineering process, from design to testing and development of a proof of concept in less 3 months. Their antifungal protein (patent pending) has already been shown to prevent bread mold for more than a month, and are already scaling this up for commercial production.

Nitrofix

In order to supply our agriculture and industries with an available source of nitrogen, we rely on a chemical process that requires 400˚C of heat and more pressure than at the bottom of the world’s deepest lake. It’s no wonder that ammonia production releases 500 million tons of CO2 annually (3% of the world’s carbon emissions). Producing green ammonia is a tall order that has puzzled chemists for decades.

With inspiration from nature, Nitrofix has designed a readily-available catalyst that can produce ammonia at room temperature and pressure, thereby nearly eliminating the heat and pressure (and thus carbon) costs. This might sound too good to be true, but their electrochemical process can produce ammonia using the voltage of a standard AA battery. Using the innovation from a renowned Weizmann Institute lab, they’ve already produced ammonia at the benchtop in the first weeks of IndieBio, and they are currently finishing an industrially scalable prototype in time for Demo Day.

MAA’VA

Concrete is the third largest greenhouse gas emitter but even less known is how much sand is required to make it. Sand mining is responsible for ecosystem collapse through erosion, water outflows, and biodiversity loss. The shortage of sand has prompted researchers to replace it with more sustainable aggregates, but the previously unsolvable issue is that any additive that is not a cementitious material creates weak points, and results in concrete that fails compressive strength testing.

MAA’VA’s scientific breakthrough is how to incorporate plastic waste into concrete without compromising strength, all while reducing the water usage for concrete production by up to 90%. Their novel building material cures faster, is cheaper to make, is 30% lighter than traditional concrete, is as strong (or even stronger) than normal concrete, and provides a path to store plastic waste into our built environment.

BioAesthetics

BioAesthetics’ Nipple-Areolar Complex Graft, or NACgraft, is a revolutionary next step in breast reconstruction that will provide patients who have had mastectomies with a new, natural, living nipple and areola. The NACgraft is a cell-free, biologically-derived nipple and areola graft that once applied by a surgeon, will allow the patient’s own body to integrate the NACgraft. This process uses the patient’s own natural ability to heal, resulting in a real and living nipple unique to and uniquely a part of the patient.

They are currently engaged in a clinical stufy for their NAC, and beginning development of enhanced biologically derived grafts — capable of sustained drug delivery — to improve outcomes for third degree burn survivors through an NIH grant.

SyntheX

SyntheX is expanding drug design into the ‘undruggable’ space for the treatment of cancer and rare diseases. They implement an innovative platform for the accelerated discovery of new classes of therapeutics that target the Achilles’ heel of cancer cells in a highly specific and selective manner. Traditional drugs work by disrupting the enzymatic function of proteins. SyntheX expands the drug discovery space from active site inhibitors to protein-protein interaction modulators using our innovative screening technology.

Aluna Medical Diagnostics

Before Aluna, patients had no way of objectively tracking their Asthma to understand triggers, measure lung function, and predict Asthma attachs.

Aluna’s platform empowers patients and clinicians to create personal action plans for their Asthma with FDA-cleared combination of a digital spirometer, a healthtracking platform, and a physician remote monitoring portal. They are currently fulfilling orders from clinicians at UCSF and family practice across the US. By enabling telemedicine Aluna has shown clinicians can intervene quickly when patients scores decrease and prevent severe symptoms.

With 41M patients suffering from Asthma or COPD, and use for COVID lung health recovery monitoring, Aluna is poised to be the solution for respiratory monitoring and care.

Edge

There’s a laundry list of reasons why cultivated meat is better for the planet, better for animals, and better for our health. So why aren’t we seeing cell-based meat in our supermarkets?

Because making cultivated meat is very expensive, making it impossible to scale. The input costs are much too high to consider bringing products to market. And the most expensive piece in production –accounting for over 80% of production’s cost–  is a component in cell culture media called growth factors.

At Edge, they’re solving this growth factor problem. They’ve created a novel bioprocess using animal cell factories that self-supply authentic growth factors. Their bioprocess methodology is sourced from mammalian cells, meaning they’re more closely mimicking the natural biological process that occurs within organisms. It isn’t through fermentation or molecular farming –both of which have extensive downstream processing. The direct production costs in recombinant protein production are very much influenced by the downstream process, specifically the isolation and purification steps. By innovating a method that needs no downstream processing, they’ve effectively cut most of the costs.

Their cell factories, compatible with existing bioprocesses, ensure a constant supply of growth factors to cells in an innovative system. The result is an increase in cell activity and a drastic decrease in production costs and contamination risk.

Forte Protein

Forte Protein has developed an expression system to produce bio-identical animal proteins such as ovalbumin and lactoferrin within plants like kale or lettuce. Their technology platform allows them to quickly and economically produce and harvest a complete spectrum of complex animal proteins in plants sustainably. Their proteins can be used as ingredients in all kinds of non-GMO, vegan, kosher, and gluten-free products such as meat replacements, energy drinks, supplements, gels, cheese, and milk alternatives.

Forte Protein’s expression vector technology was developed by Co-Founder Dr. Kathleen Hefferon at Cornell University to produce target animal proteins in greenhouses, using short plant growth cycles, that increase yield and minimize pest pressures.  

They can also repurpose their plant waste as feedstock, fertilizer, biofuel, extracts, and other plant compounds to further reduce their carbon footprint and produce additional revenue streams.

Atlantic Fish Co

Approximately 50% of the world’s fisheries are currently fished at unsustainable levels as demand increases and climate change accelerates the collapse of our oceans’ ecosystem. Wildfish populations in particular are being pushed to the brink – many of these species cannot be grown via aquaculture and will go extinct with our current trajectory.

Atlantic Fish Co’s vision is a future that’s better for people, animals, and the planet — cultivated meat and seafood technology make this possible. They are developing cultivated seafood to provide the world with delicious and sustainable protein. Cells are harvested from the fish and fed nutrients in a bioreactor. Scaffolding is used to give the cells a structure to grow on and produce the texture of a whole fish fillet. The end product is real seafood, grown directly from fish cells but without the consequences of legacy fishing.

Their product is real seafood that is delicious, clean, safe, and climate-friendly – free of plastics, mercury, and antibiotics, and grown without animal suffering or environmental impact.

Vitarka Therapeutics

A new wave of RNA therapeutics has the potential to transform treatment for solid tumours. Existing non-viral technologies cannot target tumour cells. Moreover, these fail to release the therapeutic RNA into the cytosol, less than 1% leaks out of the endosomes (a sub-cellular compartment). The remaining 99% is degraded.

EndoPore is Vitarka Therapeutics’ solution to this drug delivery problem. Using a synthetic biology approach, our team has developed pore forming proteins (PFPs) for targeted, cytosolic delivery of RNA therapeutics. PFPs have a naturally evolved mechanism of endosomal escape, which we are exploiting along with using a validated mechanism of stabilising RNA.

Pneuma

Pneuma is developing the next generation of sustainable materials – implementing the process of photosynthesis as a product feature. OXYA, their living and breathing textile, is seeded with microalgae that consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Pneuma’s vision is to help nature in the production of oxygen by transforming human-made materials – aiming for technology indistinguishable from nature. Their proprietary production process will redefine the apparel & homeware sectors and usher in a new era of engineered living materials that can photosynthesize, and help people build healthier relationships with their surroundings.

Bioeutectics

Nowadays, solvents are a necessary part of the production process in many industries and are essential for many products to work effectively. Despite their widespread use, the solvent manufacturing industry is highly reliant on petroleum refineries or manufacturing petrochemical plants. Only 10% of solvents today are manufactured using other feedstocks such as biomass.

Bioeutectics is determined to help industrial processes become more sustainable by bringing green solvents to the mainstream. The company’s non-toxic, biodegradable, and sustainable solvents are made using a combination of eutectic technology and green chemistry, allowing them to customize products and adapt them to a variety of industries such as food, pharma, and personal care.

AIMA

Period pain has an immediate negative impact on the quality of life, forcing 41% of menstruators to miss work or school. For places like the US, this results in over $7B loss annually. Current treatment options such as painkillers (NSAIDs), hormones, opioids, and surgery have serious side effects like kidney failure, stomach ulcers, blood clots, strokes, loss of fertility, and even death. So, why don’t other treatment options exist?  

AIMA is transforming the lives of 80M North American menstruators by developing a new generation of period pain management systems. They are working diligently to bring tested CBD-infused products into the hands of menstruators. Their first product, OVY, is a vaginal suppository that will offer a safe and effective pain management solution with dosages based on personalized pain response. 

AIMA will conduct a dose-escalating clinical study to assess the safety and efficacy of their CBD-infused vaginal suppository in 40 menstruators who have moderate to severe dysmenorrhea. This clinical study will provide foundational information about the blood profile of cannabinoids and provide the first scientific evidence about the vaginal delivery of CBD and CBG.

Gozen Bioworks

Founded by one of Turkey’s most famous young fashion designers, Gozen Bioworks is a biomaterials company that has created the world’s strongest and softest bio-based animal-free leather to date. Their latest product (Xylozen™) is twice as strong as animal leather, impossibly thin, and soft enough to replace lambskin in luxury tiers.

The breakthrough in their technology is the scalability of their sustainable bioproduction process: while their competitors are investing in how to engineer systems that can distribute nutrients throughout their leather alternative, Gozen has designed their leather with scalability in mind, such that their nutrient delivery system can distribute at micron-scale resolution for almost no additional CAPEX. They are in talks with several luxury brands to position their product as a high-end alternative material.

Infinite Elements

Reducing our vulnerability to disruptions in our supply of critical metals is important for national security, but the current methods used to mine and extract metals are too toxic, too energy intensive, and damage communities and the environment around the world. Infinite Elements is using synthetic biology to extract, concentrate, and purify rare earth metals found in magnets using a process already found in nature.

Their method is already low-cost, more efficient than traditional extraction methods, and requires no additional energy. Even more value-add will come from the separation, not the extraction: The ability to separate dysprosium from neodymium and praseodymium could fetch five times as much value as the mixture of the three. Their biological approach will be able to separate these metals with solutions no more acidic than lemon juice. Infinite Elements’s opening salvo is to extract and separate the $16 billion worth of rare earth elements from electronic waste and electric vehicle magnets.

Asterix Foods

Industry leading companies like Impossible, Perfect Day (RebelBio), and EVERY (IndieBio) have shown the powerful commercial appeal of animal-free proteins. Behind this first wave comes a second wave: glycoproteins.

Glycoproteins require precise glycosylations to accurately fold, recognize, and bind – driving functional performance needed in the food industry. To unlock this second wave of animal-free proteins, Asterix Foods is using plant cell culture, because plant cells can easily achieve glycosylations that microbial fermentation is challenged by.

Dandelion

To reach the full potential of RNA therapeutics, we have to understand how the tuning of just 4 ingredients in the delivery vehicle (lipid nanoparticles) can confer transfection and targeting efficiency.

Dandelion is the first to leverage machine learning and biophysics in a systematic attempt to make sense of the chaos between LNP structure and function. They are currently training a generative AI model that can design organ and cell-type specific drug delivery vehicles, with in vivo experiments to validate and course correct the machine learning. The ultimate goal is to deliver more targeted RNA therapeutics with fewer side effects.

Ingrediome

At Ingrediome, we create real meat and seafood by using photosynthetic precision fermentation to create nature-identical animal proteins. These key functional proteins capture a great deal of the taste, looks and texture of meat while enabling us to make clean-label products with better nutritional values even compared with traditional meat.

During the past 2 years, we’ve gone from lab setup to cultivating cyanobacteria in a 100 Liter Photobioreactor and now working on tripling this scale this year, with minimal costs for such scale, 100X cheaper than the equivalent steel tank system

Our first deli meat products attracted the attention of Israel’s major deli meat producer, a leading European ingredient manufacturer with which we will commence R&D collaborations. Our first seafood products earned us a spot as one of the 3 finalists of the Thai-Union innovation challenge.

Minus Materials

Concrete production has quietly doubled in the past 20 years as we are building more and more cities, and with that comes the carbon footprint of cement, which is the glue that binds concrete together. Cement production is 8% of our global GHG emissions, and efforts to “green” the cement-making process have largely been around replacing the cement recipe.

Minus Materials is using air, sunlight, and water, to photosynthetically grow the limestone used to make ordinary portland cement, identical to what is used in the industry. Their special microalgae mineralizes CO2 into limestone, which is a renewable source of limestone compared to the traditional method of blowing up our mountains and surface mining to quarry for the same minerals. Minus’s method can reduce emissions by up to 60%, and even go carbon-negative if combined with other technologies. 

New Culture

When we think of pizza, we think of gooey, melty, stretchy cheese. Unfortunately vegan cheese has not delivered. The texture is nowhere near as stretchy and doesn’t satisfy any foodie trying to replace their dairy cheese.

New Culture is making a meltable, stretchable cheese with the mouthfeel of cow-based mozzarella, by employing traditional cheesemaking techniques. In a manner similar to another key cheese-making ingredient, rennet, New Culture set about to eliminate cows from its cheese by wrangling microbial fermentation to produce caseins. These difficult-to-make proteins are the critical molecules that bring about that stretchy texture that makes cheese so cheesy.

OneSkin

OneSkin aims to promote skin rejuvenation by decoding the aging process. By replicating skin aging using 3D models and correlating biological markers with chronological age, they have created an efficient engine to screen new antiaging molecules. OneSkin is the first-in-class platform to quantitatively measure the rejuvenation effect on any molecule in human tissues

Their first topical supplement, OS-01, has been shown to act on a molecular level to reduce skin biological age, improve skin barrier, and improve cell function. OS-01 launched in Q1 2021.

STÄMM

Biology is the best platform for manufacturing cells. It can grow and produce all kinds of biomaterials very effectively. But for humans to be able to tap into this potential, we have to build bioreactors and figure out how to scale them in order to produce the massive amounts of biomaterials we need.

Bioreactors technology is very different when you’re optimizing for one reaction at one liter versus 100,000 liters, but this is where Stämm comes in. They are reinventing the way bioreactors work by developing a modular microfluidic platform that controls all the physical parameters, such as nutrients and dissolved oxygen, in a controlled environment. Unlike traditional bioreactor systems, their microfluidic bioreactor scales by adding more modules to increase the size of the reactor.

EachDay Health

There has been a steady rise in Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) patients during the last 20 years with adult diagnosis doubling in the last decade. With up to a 91% heritability, and the fact that ADHD can be brought on by environmental factors, this isn’t a problem that’s going to go away… it’s only going to get worse. 

Eachday is a digital health therapeutic company backed by Carnegie Mellon. Composed of UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Google Highmark and IDEO alumni, Eachday blends technology with medical and academic excellence to deliver evidence-based support for adolescents and adults with ADHD. 

The company is the first to digitize executive function training, delivered via their self-management app that tracks users’ behaviors and interests, such as task completion, cognitive failures,  and self-reported symptoms, to create a personalized “ADHD Profile.” Then, using data and neuroscience, Eachday provides individualized tools and evidence-based techniques to help users better understand their mind, visualize time, and craft routines that reduce the cognitive burden of completing day-to-day activities and help eliminate ADHD symptoms as they occur. Eachday recently completed their first clinical discovery study and is seeking their seed round to conduct clinical trials.

ArgenTAG

Single-cell genomics has continued to undergo enormous progress since its inception more than a decade ago. Named twice as Method of the Year by the journal Nature, it continues to evolve with this innovation delivered by ArgenTAG. 

ArgenTAG has developed the first truly scalable single-cell solution for long-read sequencers.

The company has fundamentally changed the economics of single-cell sequencing. ArgenTAG has supplanted previous methodologies utilizing expensive Next-Generation sequencers, by enabling single-cell sequencing to be performed on cheaper 3rd generation long-read DNA sequencers. This paradigm shift will allow the democratization of single-cell sequencing that has hitherto been the preserve of well-funded laboratories. This powerful tool in the hands of the many will profoundly affect how biomedical research is performed, and will enable the invention of a myriad of new long-read applications.

Conan MedTech

The number of high-profile athletes suffering from neurodegenerative disease, the result of repeated concussions during their sports career, has raised awareness of the problems associated with recurrent concussions and the resulting brain trauma. Concussions in athletes are very common. About 3.8 million concussions occur each year in the U.S. from sports-related injuries. The CDC estimates that 5-10% of athletes will experience a concussion in any given sports season. Many of these injuries go unreported and undiagnosed, leading to mismanagement and premature return to activity. Concussion symptoms are non-specific and can be frustratingly hard to diagnose. 

Conan MedTech is producing a rapid POC diagnostic test for concussions that can be performed on the sidelines. The company’s lateral flow device uses highly specific monoclonal antibodies to recognize neuronal biomarkers, which show up in saliva immediately after concussions. 

CyclicBio

During the last century, an oil economy fueled advances in chemistry creating drugs, industrial materials, food, and energy. This century is looking to the bioeconomy and engineering biology to provide more sustainable alternatives to heal, feed and fuel us.

Based on groundbreaking decarbonization research at Imperial College, CyclicBio has engineered microorganisms called cyanobacteria to convert CO2 into chemicals replacing those made by fossil fuels today. For example, their beachhead market is the $38B Flavors & Fragrances sector, starting with a range of sustainably produced lactones. Compared to current processes, CyclicBio’s technology can produce 30X less GHG emissions.

Innatrix

The global fungicide and bactericide market is expected to reach $28B by 2024. Between 20–30% of these chemical pesticides will soon be banned due to health concerns. Additionally, 64% of global farmland is at risk of small molecule pesticide pollution. Pressure from supermarkets and governments to reduce the usage of chemical pesticides to control agricultural pests has given way to the search for natural biological pesticide alternatives. Biopesticides often are effective in very small quantities and decompose quickly, resulting in lower exposures and largely avoiding the pollution and human health problems caused by conventional pesticides. Innatrix’s seasoned team of AgriTech professionals are working to replace agrochemical with biological pesticides for farmers. They have developed a robust pipeline for identifying novel biopesticides to control three economically important and critical pathogens, such as late blight, soybean cyst nematode and citrus greening.

Kalia Health

Preeclampsia, a potentially fatal pregnancy condition characterized by high blood pressure and organ damage, is the second leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide, despite the condition being straightforward to treat when detected early. The current diagnosis of preeclampsia using blood pressure and proteinuria is inaccurate and requires routine clinical visits, making it inaccessible to many. Furthermore, symptoms are subtle so birthing people are often unaware of the developing complications unless they attend regular prenatal care checkups.

Kalia Health is dedicated to improving maternal health through engineering a safe, affordable, and accessible home-based early detection test for preeclampsia (PE). The lateral flow device identifies urinary biomarkers specific to PE for a more real-time diagnosis. This test will increase the number of birthing people that self-detect and seek prenatal care for PE through home diagnosis, education, and empowerment.

Mirá Biotech

The majority of MDF (an engineered wood product) is composed of wood dust and the resin (a plastic) that binds it. The resin is the smallest component of MDF, but the biggest cost driver. Mirá Biotech eliminates the resin so that they can sell MDF for the same price as traditional MDF, but with 3-4 times the industry margin. Their secret is a 260 million-year-old enzyme used to covalently bond lignocellulosic feedstock together, without the need for any resin or chemicals.

The resulting product is 100% made of plant and wood fibers joined via a completely biological polymerization. Mirá’s MDF is a completely safe and more moisture resistant than traditional MDF, which releases volatile gasses into our homes and makes MDF difficult to recycle and biodegrade. They’re scaling up their manufacturing right now in Brazil to produce 20,000 boards a month, and will expand beyond MDF to other types of engineered wood… formaldehyde-free, and resin-free.

Laguna Bio

Laguna Bio is perfecting an entirely new approach to selectively activate and expand a specific type of T cell, the gamma-delta T (γδ T) cells, to take full advantage of the immune system’s ability to fight solid tumors. The γδ T cells are an obscure but homogeneous population of immune cells that you can count on to kill cancer cells. CAR-γδ T cells have shown success in clinical studies of B-cell lymphoma; Allogeneic γδ T cells have already shown promise in liver and lung cancers.

Building on a collaborator’s positive human data and from live-attenuated Listeria, Laguna is designing a proprietary Listeria to be the safest and most robust yet highly selective activator of these T cells. Increasing response rate of a bispecific antibody drug using Laguna’s listeria would be a major advance for those with solid tumors and represents a multi-billion dollar opportunity. 

west~bourne

west~bourne was the first certified zero-waste restaurant in NYC. Now the founder Camilla Marcus is in LA, where she has created the world’s first zero-waste packaged goods brand, sourcing exclusively from farms that deploy regenerative agriculture. Their baking mixes, tasty snacks, and yummy sauces are quickly winning awards and prominent distribution.

As regenerative ag practices increase, farmers don’t want to dump their premium ingredients into the CPG brands of old. With west~bourne, they are creating a “regenerative twin” supply and processing chain. 

Melio

In theory, the holy grail of diagnostics is simple: a rapid, universal probe that detects hundreds of pathogens at once, with broad coverage that doesn’t compromise sensitivity, uses small sample volume, doesn’t need long wait times from R&D and manufacturing, and is cheap. In practice, it is much harder.

Melio overturns the traditional one-pathogen one-probe paradigm for infectious diseases, and is able to deploy new diagnostic capabilities “over the air” with a few universal probes. In the future, when a new, unknown pathogen emerges, Melio will be able to develop the detection parameters in San Francisco, and then “push” that update out to the rest of the world to all of their devices that work with their existing cartridges in a manner of minutes, without needing to manufacture and distribute new product lines. With their patented method, they’ll also be able to expedite regulatory approval processes.

The secret sauce can be aptly described like this: Interpreting sequence information without sequencing. Melio’s protected approach will also allow the retroactive surveillance of even unidentified pathogens. Their beachhead market is neonates, where 10% of newborns end up in the NICU, and 99% of them receive precautionary but totally unnecessary antibiotic treatment because it takes days to do the blood culture. Melio is allowing doctors to go from sample-to-result in less than 3 hours.

Nat4Bio

Every day, more food (and more resources to grow that food) is required to feed an ever-increasing world population. Consequently, reducing spoilage is becoming a vital element of any sustainable strategy.

Nat4Bio is a biotechnology platform that develops naturally-sourced and zero-residue coatings that protect fruit from spoilage. They leverage microbial fermentation of selected fungi & bacteria in order to produce natural compounds with relevant properties. Through carefully designed downstream processes, they are able to obtain cell-free compounds, meaning they use microbes’ active principles without the microbes themselves. Their first product is a natural and edible coating for fresh lemons that could potentially replace the combination of waxes and chemical fungicides. They are also working with blueberries and avocados, and their goal is to expand their portfolio to address the specific needs of all types of fruit.

Tesarakt

Neurological disorders, like Alzheimer’s, can be challenging to diagnose, especially earlier in the disease progression when symptoms are subtle. Alzheimer’s is both under-diagnosed and misdiagnosed, resulting in delayed diagnosis and treatment on average by 2-3 years after symptom onset and only in the latter stages of the disease once it has taken hold. Based on the groundbreaking research carried out in Scott Small’s lab at Columbia University, Tesarakt uses AI and machine learning to enhance the predictive power of neurodiagnosis using conventional MRI scans, and powered with access to the largest database of MRI scans. 

Parkinson’s disease & Alzheimer’s disease are the initial indications they are pursuing, with the potential to detect both diseases years before first symptoms arise. 

Pyrone Systems

Pesticides are always a compromise: if you kill the mosquitos, you end up killing the bees too. Pyrone discovered a rare natural compound that controls mosquitos and other pests not by killing them, but by temporarily stunning them. Already fast-tracked by the EPA and being tested by the USDA in Gainesville, Pyrone is now scaling this compound in their fermentation system with Agile Biofoundry. 

Conventional thinking is that synthetic chemistry is cheaper than biology. Pyrone focuses on compounds that biology can produce far cheaper than chemistry. From the same process used for the biopesticide, they can make 7 other products, accessing $40 billion in markets. 

Cellens

In the field of liquid biopsy, the abundance of new technologies are mere screening tests. They can’t monitor patients’ progression and drive clinical decisions. The real money is in monitoring disease patients, for years. 

Atomic Force Microscopy scans the surface of cells at such high resolution that it can not only discriminate cancer cells from healthy cells, it can identify the stage and aggressiveness. The scientific community is so excited by Cellens’ work that grant funding is covering all the costs of their pre-clinical trials at Dana Farber, Dartmouth, and UW.

Solid Ox Motors

Solid Ox is building Range Extenders for commercial fleets of electric trucks and buses. These range extenders use liquid fuel, where the CO2 is captured on board, right back into the fuel tank. Emissions-free. 

Commercial fleets that need long range are very price sensitive to fueling costs. They also run day and night, so have short windows to refuel or recharge. Solid Ox allows fleets to refuel in half the time, at half the cost. 

Solid Ox has a partnership with Smith Electric Vehicles.

Bosque Foods

We all know the over consumption of animal products is a major cause of global warming and environmental degradation, and that the best way we can lower our carbon footprints is to switch to a plant-based diet. However, consumers are compromising on products that are ultra-processed, not necessarily healthy, and lacking variety: today’s meat-alternatives are mostly burgers, sausages & nuggets, and consumers lack ‘whole-muscle’ plant-based products.

Bosque Foods creates healthier, nutrient-dense, and minimally processed whole-cut meat-alternatives, grown naturally from mycelium. By leveraging mycelium’s inherent structure, they can naturally replicate the texture of meat without the need for a long list of additives found in current meat alternatives. This means that we can create better-than-meat products that deliver on the entire taste experience, nutrition, and affordability without compromise.

Soliome

All  available  sunscreen  active  ingredients  absorb  through our  skin,  interfering  with  hormones  and  even  exacerbating UV damage. Meanwhile, SPFs in cosmetics,  washed down  the  drain at night,  accumulate  in  sensitive marine  environments,  where  even  the  “reef  safe”  versions threaten endangered corals and marine life.

Based on groundbreaking work in protein engineering at Princeton, Soliome has reinvented sunscreens and SPFs, an $18B global market. ​​It is totally safe, long-lasting and goes on clear without white residue.

Why now: In October of 2022, new FDA regulations on sunscreens take effect, dramatically reducing the cost and burden of approval.

Why it’s scalable: Because Soliome can make their SPFs from any protein. Even common plant proteins already used as food.

Puna Bio

The market value of farmland is driven by yield. For example, increasing soy yield by 10 bushels an acre can double the value of the farmland.

Puna Bio repairs soil health using extremophiles – organisms 3.5 billion years old, sourced from La Puna, the highest and driest desert on Earth. These organisms grow where others can’t – and they sustain plant life, despite getting 1/5th the rainfall of Death Valley.

When an athlete trains at altitude, she is even stronger at sea level. So it is with Puna’s extremophiles. They work wonders on degraded, acidic, and salinated soil. In fertile soil, they boost yields 4x more than competitors, with far more consistent results.

Puna Bio is already at industrial scale, having treated +600 tonnes of seeds this season, and conducted over 20,000 acres of field trials.

ProtonIntel

Potassium controls every single heartbeat you have, but it’s the kidneys that control your potassium levels. You could say the kidneys are the gatekeeper to your heart.

Kidney care is going through dramatic market disruption. Home dialysis is displacing clinics. And patient care management companies are siphoning off patients. Nevertheless, these patients are still ending up in the hospital 2 to 3 times a year, because none of them have a way to remotely and continuously monitor patient potassium data. ProtonIntel will power this entire new ecosystem. 

CellCrine

CellCrine discovered an enzyme that transforms cell culture for the cell-based meats industry.

It’s made recombinantly, but can be used at such low concentration that only a tiny bit is needed.

The impact is dramatic — reducing the need for insulin, transferrin, FGF2, TGFb, and other expensive media ingredients. The cells grow nearly as fast as they do en vivo.

CellCrine’s enzyme works by stimulating cells to make their own growth factors; it also chaperones growth factors to receptors. With muscle cells, they also help myotube formation. 

The enzyme is food grade and natural.

Intrinsic Medicine (fka Lupa Bio)

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.

Wayfinder Biosciences

In the last few years, aptamers linked to CRISPR have brought programmable logic to drug design. However, the logic is primitive – once turned on, CRISPR remains on. Wayfinder is working on RNA-biosensors so that drugs can continuously sense their microenvironment, and turn modalities like CRISPR both on and off in response to what they are sensing.

And they do it way faster than anyone else in the world. Wayfinder is WAY faster.

A spinout from the Center for Synthetic Biology at the University of Washington, Wayfinder has already done 8 biosensors and is engaging multiple ecosystem partners.

Unlocked Labs

Modern lifestyles are hard on our livers and kidneys, the organs that filter and break down metabolic waste products. But people don’t want to take drugs – they want to get healthy. Unlocked Labs unleashes the power of the microbiome to help out. 

Unlocked is a consumer probiotic company that unlocks silent genes – regaining the power to reduce toxins in our bodies.

Some gut microbes have the genes to eat our waste products as food, as a carbon source. These are dormant genes – they can be unlocked and activated. The company’s first products reduce uric acid and oxalic acid. High uric acid leads to gout, and high oxalic acid leads to kidney stones.

RizLab Health

RizLab Health is addressing the pandemic of antimicrobial resistance and helping clinicians by pinpointing the source of infection (and thus preventing inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions) with their point-of-care device, the CytoTracker. The CytoTracker differentiates bacterial from viral infection profiles within minutes using only a single drop of blood. A 200-person clinical study demonstrated the CytoTracker beats the specificity of current testing methods, making it the most affordable, portable, and accurate blood analyzer.

Veloz Bio

There’s two general concerns around molecular farming, where animal proteins are grown in field crops. First, the extraction and purification. Second, the regulatory landscape for transgenic crops amidst other farmland. 

Veloz Bio doesn’t use the farm. And the founders are experts at extraction and membrane purification. Without the need of bioreactors, they can develop and scale up new protein production in less than 6 months.

Sea & Believe

All over Europe, people know the best tasting seaweed comes from Ireland. Sea & Believe founder Jennifer O’Brien walked every beach in Ireland, tasting the seaweed for her alternative seafood. She found one beach where the seaweed was remarkably tastier than all others. “It just had that distinctive spray of the ocean,” said O’Brien. 

But this one beach cannot sustain an industry. Sea & Believe is cultivating this special strain for its filets and goujons. You’ll want seconds. 

For this new line of foods, Plantruption has partnerships with Wageningen University, Clextral, and the University of Limerick.

Climate Crop

Photosynthesis wastes sunlight. Many scientific efforts are underway to reengineer photosynthesis to increase yields. Climate Crop – 5 years in the making at Weizmann Institute – will outgrow them all. 

It works in all vascular plants. It’s simple – downregulating one enzyme. During the day, plants increase their storage of transient starch; at night, they use this starch as building blocks for all cell matter. Climate Crop simply increases the storage of transient starch – then the plant takes it from there.

Climate Crop will power applications across agriculture and industrial markets. Higher yielding cotton. More affordable animal feed. Carbon-sucking poplars.  Aviation fuels from rapeseed.

Prothegen

There’s thousands of ways that cells become unhealthy. But until 2012, there were only two ways that cells actually die. That year, the cofounder of Prothegen, Dr. Scott Dixon, discovered a new way cells die, called ferroptosis, an iron-mediated failure of antioxidant defenses. Now Dixon has partnered with Roche alum Davide Zanchi and chemist Derek Pratt – one of the world’s specialists in free radical trapping – to develop drugs that stop cells from dying of ferroptosis. 

Ferroptosis is implicated in some of the main life threatening conditions of our time: stroke, ischemic injuries, neurodegeneration, cancer, NASH, and organ transplantation.

Upright

Milk should be a delicious and protein-rich drink, but many milk alternatives lack the nutrient depth of cow’s milk. Upright has created the world’s first protein-rich, allergen-free, vegan oat milk option with double the protein of other oat milks. In addition, each cup of Upright Oats saves 39 gallons of water compared with cow’s milk, making it the healthiest AND most sustainable option.

Tômtex

The TômTex mission is to create innovative material designs that parallel lifecycles observed in nature and serve as alternatives to the production methods that have contributed to our world’s environmental crisis. Our revolutionary bio-based materials offer a sustainable, accessible, and practical alternative to currently available commercial material options.

Kyomei

Alternatives to animal protein include plant-based, fermentation-based, and cellular agriculture-based options, but all suffer from a lack of true ‘meatiness.’ Kyomei is using a novel strategy to scale production of meat myoglobin produced in plants. Their patented ingredient will be the foundation of truly satisfying umami plant-based burgers, powering the next generation of tasty plant-based protein.

Pannex Therapeutics

Pannex Therapeutics is a pioneer biopharmaceutical company totally focused on the development of a novel therapeutic class of Pannexin 1 channel (Panx1) blockers. Pannex is developing a platform of small molecules that blocks this exciting new pharmacological target, Panx1 channels.

With potential applications in many therapeutic areas, the initial focus is on chronic pain treatment. The company is currently developing a first-in-class, selective and highly potent oral Panx1 channel blocker, for the treatment of chronic pain and prevention of opioid addiction.

Kutanios

The cosmetic effects of ageing on skin and the development of skin cancers result from multiple changes in three types of skin cells (fibroblasts, keratinocytes, melanocytes) and degeneration of extracellular components (collagen, elastin). These changes are accelerated by toxic chemicals that are produced in skin when it is exposed to all wavelengths of sunlight, all common atmospheric pollutants, and tobacco smoke.

Kutanios produces a peptide-based ingredient that prevents skin damage from aging and sun exposure via topical application. The novel mechanism stops skin cells from degrading the surrounding collagen and promoting inflammation, common causes of sun-damage related aging. Not only does this peptide protect against sun and skin damage, but their ingredient is biodegradable and safe for the environment, unlike common sunblocks.

Inso Bio

Biological sample preparation has not kept pace with the dramatic changes in analytical techniques. Nowhere is this more evident than in DNA sample prep, which continues to be a low throughput process serving high throughput next-generation DNA sequencing. This mismatch is limiting the accelerated uptake of next generation sequencing.

Inso Bio envisions a future of increased accessibility, where complex sample prep protocols are completed from start to finish with the push of a button. This is why we are developing next-generation platforms to streamline workflows leading up to sequencing, to give people more time to devote to science, discovery, and data, rather than wrestling with their samples.

Helex Bio

Helex Bio enables gene therapy companies to design gRNAs & simulate outcomes of CRISPR edits to bring effective therapies to market faster with our Helex Platform™. The Helex Platform™ guides gene therapy companies in target identification, design and validation of efficient and safe gRNAs for creating functional impact with minimal significant off-targets. Additionally, the platform simulates edit outcomes to reliably develop therapy protocols.

The Helex Platform™ is powered by intelligent data driven deep-learning modeling using extensive high throughput next generation sequencing data derived from CRISPR edits on human cell lines. Helex not only gives reliable predictions through the Helex Platform™, but validate them in-house using cell-based assays and next generation sequencing to support with proven experimental data for high degree of reliability.

Ceragen

In a time when extreme climate makes crop harvests uncertain, greenhouses offer consistent yields while using fewer water and land resources. Ceragen contributes to the sustainable intensification of crop production with a single application of their ACCelerate probiotic, which increases hydroponic tomato yields up to 16% in field trials. Ceragen’s microbial discovery platform has a pipeline of additional products, with a lettuce product expected in Q3 2022.

Beeflow

70% of agricultural produce relies on bes for pollination. Yet modern agriculture has neglected pollination as a means to improving yields, and we know that bee colony collapse is a major risk factor for food security in the coming years.

Beeflow’s bee health supplements and bee hive management supercharge pollination, leading to an increase crop yields and improve the quality of fruits and seeds, without compromising the health of bees. By measuring pollination and bee-plant interactions Beeflow can help farmers plan water use, fertilizer use and enhance farm inventory management. The company has been running successfull pilot programs over the past two years, delivering unprecedented yields and now rapidly scaling to expand operations to farms across the West Coat and Latin America, covering almonds, berries and more.

Jungla Inc.

A huge problem in genetics is understanding what a particular mutation in a gene will do if it has not been observed before. BRCA1 is a well known mutation that causes susceptibility to breast cancer. We know that at the 185th nucleotide a deleted Adenine or Guanine can predispose one to breast cancer. This is because after sequencing thousands of breast cancer genes we observe this deletion event over and over and therefore have correlated the two events.

If if you sequenced your gene for breast cancer and they found a sequence that wasn’t normal but also not seen as cancer causing, what would you do? That sequence is called a Variant of Unknown Significance, or as is said in the industry, a VUS. While doing their PhDs and postdoctoral work at Stanford, Carlos and Alex had developed an approach to solve the mystery of VUSs. They used machine learning to look at the particular variant and predict its effect on the protein and the level of harmfulness of the variant. Later on, they developed a lab based assay to corroborate the interpretations, and further train the network (a critical piece of the puzzle we call “wet-in-the-loop”).

The largest genetic testing service to individuals and healthcare providers, Invitae, needed a solution to the VUS interpretation problem. With his skillset in hand, Carlos approached and closed, within four months, a pilot with Invitae to interpret VUSs in their samples. The pilot went so well that Invitae offered to acquire Jungla to incorporate their technology into Invitae’s offering.

Lingrove

Wood is a touchy subject. It could be considered a more sustainable material than plastic because it’s regenerative, but we’re simply just not regenerating them fast enough.

Lingrove is a materials company that is making wood without the trees. Their signature material, Ekoa, is lighter than carbon fiber, stiffer than fiberglass, and the wood grain finish is simply beautiful. Their product is made from a bioresin bonded with flax, which is normally discarded anyway after they are harvested for flaxseed. Ekoa can be molded into complex shapes and dyed to match the finishes of even the most expensive hardwoods. High performance, planet-positive and carbon-negative products without compromising the beauty.

NovoNutrients

As the world’s population continues to balloon, demand for seafood is going with it. Aquaculture is the primary method to meet demand, but relies on feeding billions of small fish to larger fish. A process that is inherently unsustainable and is only getting worse as ocean fish supply dwindles. C.E.O. David Tze started his journey investing in an aquaculture investment management company, when he saw the need for a growing food and protein supply.

NovoNutrients is looking to solve this problem with a radically different approach, growing high-quality bacterial protein from waste carbon dioxide. Their microbes break down industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and reassemble them into low-cost and nutrient-rich aquaculture feed and specialty ingredients, which sequesters the pollution and turns it into high-value proteins.

A2A Pharmaceuticals

A2A is a partnership driven drug design company with candidates across cancer, infrectious disease, and rare diseases. Most of the pharmaceutical industry is focused on analysis of existing libraries of drug-like molecules with computational tools and high-throughput screening. By contrast, A2A is exploring 100s of millions of molecules in chemical space to develop proprietary databases of safe and effective new drug candidates. The approach enables rigorous pre-optimization of therapeutics before laboratory testing begins. Interest in A2As oncology programs with multiple pharmaceutical partner possibilities has picked up after revealing positive data from the Leukemia program.

They have a robust internal pipeline, with a focus on drug designs for breaking protein-protein interactions and collaborations with Daewood Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, and In Silico Medicine.

GateHouse Bio (fka sRNAlytics)

When your cells make instructions in the form of mRNAs, there are also many small RNAs (sRNAs) that regulate those instructions. They regulate the health and disease of all living things, and researchers are now finding out that their activity patterns are indicative of overall patterns in the body.

Turns out, this is a good strategy for biomarker discovery. Gatehouse developed an RNA analytics platform intended to classify patient samples with binary accuracy. The company’s platform identifies small RNA biomarkers and discovers molecular pathways of disease through deep analysis of small RNAs and accelerates the development of targeted therapies, enabling custom bio-markers and companion diagnostics driving cures.

Reach Neuro

There is a quiet “moon landing” for the stroke survivor community: Reach Neuro’s patented spinal cord stimulation device has been able to restore upper limb function to patients even 9 years after the initial stroke event, immediately restoring their ability to self-direct a spoonful of food into their mouth, and even sign their own name.

Restoring voluntary control of this magnitude has never been achieved before for stroke survivors. The innovation here is that the stimulation target is the sensory neuron, and therefore doesn’t try to force motor neurons to fire involuntarily. The brain is still in full control. Secondly, there is a personalized stimulation protocol for each patient that Reach Neuro has been optimizing in humans for over a year. While the results are incontrovertible, Reach is currently planning to test head-to-head against the best physical therapy regimen available (but we already know how this is going to end).

Amaryllis Nucleics, Inc.

Amaryllis Nucleics took a laborious and complicated chemical process to enable RNA sequencing and reduced it to a kit that non-experts can use and can complete the task in hours, when it used to take days. With a more accurate process, as well, Amaryllis Nucleics is democratizing access to RNA sequencing and in turn, acclerating the speed at which genomics discoveries are made by researchers.

Amino Labs

Amino Labs is pioneering accessible genetic engineering by enabling non-experts to begin learning and doing genetic engineering projects outside of traditional environments. With a technology ecosystem that includes a new type of lab equipment called a minilab, a wide range of genetic engineering wetware kits, and online software simulations, Amino Labs offers the most comprehensive range of genetic engineering education products on the market.

Amino Labs is unique in that it is the only company that tailors products for non-experts. Presently there are educational products that aid in teaching genetic engineering, however, they are designed and developed for “expert” teachers that have professional training (life science Ph.D or industry expertise), and for schools with traditional laboratory equipment. This represents a substantial barrier and we estimate that more than 90% of secondary schools, more than 47,000 schools in North America, are unable to offer genetic engineering education to their students.

AnimalBiome

AnimalBiome creates microbiome-based therapeutics to treat the more than 9 million cats and dogs in the US living with chronic digestive disorders. They have developed a patent pending process for creating a fecal microbiota transplant pill that is stable at room temperature and highly effective. Animal Microbiome has been treating cats and dogs for more than 3 years and over 90% have shown a decrease in the frequency of diarrhea, vomiting, and/or constipation. In the course of creating this product, they have also created the world’s largest database of microbiome samples in the order Carnivora, and are leverage this database to create next generation probiotics and veterinary diagnostics.

Ardra Bio

“Natural ingredients is the fastest growing segment in food, personal care, and health-&-wellness industry, but large companies can’t find reliable scalable supplies. For example, in 2016 there was an acute shortage of natural citrus ingredients because of citrus greening disease. Just the year before, prices of natural vanilla increased 10X due to low supply and increased demand.

Ardra’s synthetic biology platform unlocks multiple hard to make high value compounds through the fermentation of natural sugars, and their expertise in making designer microorganisms. Their platform utilizes computational methods in conjunction with a high throughput screening of proprietary enzyme libaries. This platform has already ben validated for multiple ingredients. Ardra has one joint development agreement to scale and distribute their first fragrance, leaf aldehyde. Deeper in their pipeline is animal-free Heme, Hazelnut flavor, a ketone mono-ester, cannabinoids, and several natural colors.

Circularis

Circularis’s technology screens a huge library of promoters in a single cell. Through directed evolution selection, the strongest promoters rise to the top and can be identified and incorporated into a host of gene expression applications, such as biomanufacturing and gene therapy. Beyond just promoters, their technology also works for enhancers, silencers/repressers, stability sequences, and nuclear delivery sequences. The process happens within days, instead of months.

DNALite

DNAlite Therapeutics is an early stage pharmaceutical platform developing nucleic acid medicines. mRNA has emerged as a leading therapeutic modality, but delivery remains to be a bottleneck. While current approaches inject mRNA into the bloodstream, DNAlite has created an oral approach to mRNA delivery that survives the stomach and gets taken up by epithelial cells in the gut. Once in the cells, the mRNA is read and the gut cells manufacture proteins — whatever is coded in the mRNA. These epithelial cells naturally turnover and refresh every 3 to 4 days, so DNAlite medicines could be taken on a regular cadence. The proteins expressed can be antibodies and other biologics; it can be equivalent to rare disease gene therapy, but essentially reversible, because no permanent changes are made.

The company has demonstrated proof of platform in-vivo, producing and quantifying proteins from orally given mRNA creating a completely new modality with broad and unique value. They are slated to enter the clinic with IL-22 as their first therapeutic target to tackle indications such as Inflammatory bowel disease (3 Mn
patients in US), Acute graft versus host disease of the gut (incidence of ~5000/yr), and Necrotizing enterocolitis (incidence: ~400/yr in the US).

Dahlia Biosciences

Dahlia Biosciences is leading the development of cell-based RNA detection tools using CRISPR technology. The foundational RNA-targeting Cas9 technology was invented by Dr. Mitchell O’Connell and Dr. Sam Sternberg in the laboratory of Dr. Jennifer Doudna at UC Berkeley.

The company is dedicated to empower scientists to study and isolate cells at high resolution via sensitive, robust, and multiplexed RNA detection in both fixed and live cells. Their CRISPR based RNA detection reagents will plug seamlessly into existing flow cytometry workflows, reducing the time and cost-basis of research and development. Their kits and reagents can supercharge the many applicaitons based on fixed-cell analysis and live-cell sorting with wide-ranging implications for detection of disease to design of biomarkers and drugs.

Girihlet

The complexity and growing prevalence of autoimmune disorders demands attention. Baked into our immune cells are records of the interplay between the genome, diet, and the environment.

Girihlet’s patented approach to sequencing T-cell receptors (TCR) unlocks these complex interactions by classifying TCRs into actionable biomarkers to diagnose and identify treatment avenues for autoimmune diseases.

Indee Labs

With their microvortex shedding technology, Indee Labs’ cell engineering platform preserves cell function while boasting high recovery efficiencies and each 5 x 10mm chip can process >50 million cells at >2-4 million cells per second and as low as 100uL in processing volume.

This matters to the population of patients who today cannot afford cell therapy due to the high cost associated with their production. With this system, the ability to engineer T-cells rapidly and more efficiently will make cell therapies more accesible.

mFluiDX

Three years before COVID made everyone care about rapid molecular diagnostics, mFluiDx was already working on it. They were fighting epidemics before it was cool. Their initial prototype, funded by The Gates Foundation and DARPA, was working on rapid diagnostics for Zika virus. When patients would normally have to wait for days to get a result. mFluiDx’s prototype offered them an accurate diagnosis faster than a Spanish siesta, and 100X cheaper than a PCR setup.

mFluiDx presents a fast and portal DNA-based technology for identifyuing outbreaks of dangerous diseases in the field. Using microfluidics, they’ve engineered a field-ready, affordable, sensitive, and rapid approach that democratizes high-need diagnostics for everyone in the world.

mFluiDx selected as one of the top 20 startups to pitch at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield, from a pool of 900 startups globally.

Perennial

At all stages of our lives, our nutritional needs vary. Babies have different nutritional requirements, as do pregnant mothers and rapidly growing teens. Want to live forever? There’s probably an optimum diet for that as well.

That’s why Perennial is using their plant-based dairy platform to go after the elderly (>50) nutrition market with a high-value, indulgent drink, thoughtfully crafted to support the gut and the brains of aging adults. Perennial uses advanced technologies to take the best features of dairy and plant ingredients to break apart healthy fats and adhere them to the surface of plant proteins, making the resulting fat/protein matrix perform even better than actual dairy. Perennial is paving the way to purposeful nutrition that tastes good, and is easy to access.

Pheronym

We spend around $70 billion worldwide on toxic chemicals used as pesticides, but that number is shrinking, as places like Europe and even the US are calling on a ban on toxic pesticides that harm both bees and humans. There is still a growing need, however, for safe and effective pesticides to meet the world’s demand for food.

Pheronym’s technology improves plant health and crop yield using a new pheromone to control parasitic roundworms and control insect pests in the soil, enabling farmers and cultivators to apply bio-pesticides for eliminating insects without affecting the plant’s health and freshness.

Qidni Labs Inc.

We take our kidneys for granted. These organs remove waste, salts, and excess water, and we get to expel them from our body through urination. When you have kidney failure–like over 660,000 adults in the US–you become a dialysis patient, and have to drive into a clinic every other day to get hooked up to a gigantic machine that filters your blood for you. This can cost anywhere between $80,000 to $140,000 per patient per year. If only there was a way to have a portable, at-home kidney that you can take with you anywhere.

Qidni is making their own artificial kidneys, connected to the cloud, so they can enable independent dialysis providers to serve millions of patients without owning any clinics. Their QGel adsorbent can perform dialysis with 100X less water, and with significant cost savings. Qidni has already demonstrated the portability and viability of their artificial kidneys on a fully nephrectomized sheep (no kidneys). It survived, and the “kidneys” filtered out even more urea than is normally done in a typical dialysis session in a clinic.

QuantumCyte

When the team talked to oncologists about their pain points, they discovered that it all boils down to two things: slow time from biopsy to actionable result, and limited prognostic value because the data isn’t given them complete information. This isn’t surprising: 4-6 weeks to wait for biopsy results is a long time to wait for a cancer patient.

Quantumcyte can return information in less than a week and provide not just basic information to treat with standard of care, but other more important markers. The company returns 4x more data per sample because they have more precise methods and integrate AI into their system.
Their AI maps the tissue biopsy and identify specific regions (e.g., where the cancer cells are) to automate the analysis, thereby returning more precise data on significant portions of the biopsy, rather than losing it in the noise. Their AI gets better and better every sample it runs. This platform technology is extending beyond cancers, and currently testing on brain tissue and solid tissue (e.g., for psoriasis).

Namuh

The profile of human breast milk contains human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), which, over thousands of years, have evolved to carry special gut and overall health benefits just for developing babies. Not only that, but humans produce over 1000 times more milk oligosaccharides than other mammals.

Namuh is creating those HMOs by yeast fermentation. HMOs are found naturally in human breast milk and is a key ingredient in feeding the good microbiome of the infant to cultivate a healthy gut and immune system. Using Baker’s yeast, Namuh recreates these ingredients to add to infant formula, and other foods. Their goal is to create better nutrition for formula-fed babies, and then move on to the probiotic and functional food categories for adults.

Ten63 Therapeutics

Using computers to design better drugs has been quite effective when there’s already a lot of knowledge about the compounds and the protein targets they’re hitting. But those approaches to in silico drug design haven’t worked well for new areas, where there isn’t a lot of knowledge. It’s the difference between interpolation and extrapolation.

To go after biological pathways where there hasn’t been much success in the past — and design entirely novel classes of drugs — a different approach was needed.

The Ten63 platform BEYOND, leverages a proprietary AI and state-of-the-art physical models to explore an unprecedentedly large chemical space, allowing them to discover new therapeutics to targets previously believed undruggable. While their competitors search through a few million compound variations for the best fit, Ten63 can easily and efficiently search through billions of possibilities. This allows them to also design drugs against all likely mutations of, for example, a tumor.

Mezomax

Non-union’ fractures are common in people with low and imbalanced hormones, such as the elderly, but may also result from infection, inadequate blood supply to the bone, and incorrect splinting. Surgery, which has a low level of success, is the current standard of care. Full recovery from non-union fracture surgery is rare and repeat surgeries are often required.

MezoMax created a first of its kind, convenient, twice daily oral formulation called MMX-701 that works by delivering calcium directly to the bone producing cells to accelerate healing and provide for more complete bone union in non-union fractures.

MMMX-701 was tested in over 1,000 patients in three international Investigators-Initiated Trials, using an open-label adaptive design, and has shown good safety and tolerability, a significant increase in the bone mineral density (assessed via Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry as a T-score in the lumbar vertebrae), and decreased bone resorption.

Ember Medical Inc

Cardiac arrest is one of the most time critical conditions that can strike anywhere. For the patient, each minute until the ambulance arrives has a huge impact on survival and future medical complications.

Ember makes telehealth accessible in frontier markets and hard-to-reach regions around the globe. The company’s platform connects medical professionals via a video or a live chat to determine whether a visit to the physician is required, thereby empowering patients with the ease and accessibility of quality remote care while providing physicians with a full suite of virtual clinic tools.

CASPR Biotech

What do you do when all the Cas proteins get locked up in IP because of the CRISPR war? You go to the ends of the earth to find an undiscovered Cas protein. And that’s what the Caspr team did, traveling to high-altitude mountains and volcanoes to find extremophiles in Argentina where there might be a Cas protein whose upbringing might endow them with temperature resistance.

Caspr has been acquired by a Fortune 100 company.
Now Caspr is using their special Cas to develop cheap and rapid CRISPR-based test kits ƒor infectious diseases. One month after they graduated from IndieBio, COVID-19 hit and Caspr’s team knew exactly what they had to do. They flew out their scientists out of Argentina to come live in San Francisco, where 15 of them lived in a single house in Alamo Square, all trying to develop tests for the coronavirus.

After demonstrating how rapidly they were able to develop their tests, Caspr was approached by Amazon to help with their internal efforts to test their employees.

Serenity Bioworks

Serenity is a therapeitucs company focusing on cellular stress pathways. Their premise is that when cells encounter a stressful environment — whether it be a lack of oxygen, increase in temperature, or exposure to a toxin — they express a myriad of stress-induced proteins, like heat shock proteins (HSPs), to maintain the cell’s order. In some instances, cells also secrete and export these signals to communicate with immune cells to avoid cellular destruction and inflammation, and maintain self-antigen tolerance. The benefits of exercise, sauna-use, and fevers, have all pointed towards stress-induced signals that can be used to treat diseases. Loaded with this insight and leveraging recent academic research and tools in stress, genomics, proteomics, and systems immunology Serenity is developing a pipeline of new medicines that will address urgent unmet needs for autoimmune disorders. They call their platform StressTek™ — enabling therapeutic targets from endogenous cellular stress pathways.

Their lead candidate SER-101 is targeting Lupus through this platform. The company will continue to explore the interface of stress and immunology to develop the next generation of StressTek™ therapeutics.Serenity’s lead therapeutic for Lupus, SER-101, is shown to preserve kidney function in a lupus mouse model and was demonstrated as safe in a phase I/IIa clinical trial.

Oralta

Most tools for oral health treat symptoms, rather than the root cause of disease, dysbiosis of the oral biome.

Oralta is solving this by blending highly effective strains of probiotics to restore a healthy equilibrium of beneficial bacteria to outcompete odor and disease causing bacteria. After selling out of their first batches, they are now scaling product to meet consumer and dentist demand. Long term they are building a database of strains based on high through out testing of strains in combinations to treat consumer and clinical oral health conditions.

Nuro Corp

With the 17 million new patients every year who are recovering from a stroke, a third of them will be touchless and voiceless. These victims have aphasia and paralysis to a point that they can no longer interact with the rest of the world, and can bring an individual to a such an imprisonment in their own bodies, that life feels like it no longer matters.

Nuro is making a headset and multimodal, multidirectional operating system (dubbed NUOS) to help a locked-in patients communicate with the world. Their headset is combining EEG and EOG into a set of algorithms that give stroke patients their independence and dignity back. You can view their current work on their website where they show patients communicating independently with just their brain – no voice, no touch. They are the only manufacturer in the world cleared by Health Canada, US IRB and US FDA under ‘Expanded Access’ for Communication by Brain for up to Locked-In Stage VI ALS.  NURO has developed a complete neurological product line named NUOS, which can be implemented instantly without any brain surgery and with a wide range of individuals, from healthy human beings to victims of Stroke, Trauma or Neurodegeneration.

Neurocarrus Inc

Traditionally, people in pain are given Opioids—which, although they relieve pain, can have dangerous side effects such as loss of motor function, and addiction. Ocycontin, Vicodin, and other pain relievers are effective in subduing pain, but they are extremely addictive, which causes major problems in families and communities.

The Opioid Crisis is a reality we’re facing now—but what if pain could be treated another way? That’s exactly what Neurocarrus has been working on. Their new drug delivery technology safely disrupts pain signals without possessing addiction-forming qualities. The company’s lead asset, N-001, is a novel protein that was synthesized to target key sensory neuron structures called actin. It is designed to disrupt peripheral pain signaling without affecting motor function or causing addiction.

Michroma

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.

Membio

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.

Dalton Bioanalytics

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.

Convalesce Inc

Convalesce is a biotech company pioneering local in situ genetic and cellular reprogramming, such as turning glial cells to neurons, or alpha to beta cells to replenish insulin. Reprogramming these cells ex-vivo has compromising limitations and nucleic acid medicines can’t effectively localize in vivo.

Convalesce have developed a platform that enables hyperlocal cell reprogramming through advanced materials harboring genes and/or cells of interest in vivo. We have demonstrated that CNV platform’s ECM can provide robust cell survival (3X) in vivo and enhance targeted differentiation. We were also able to get 2.5X higher expression of a gene-of-interest. Convalesce is leveraging its platform initially to target eye disease, dry age related macular degeneration (AMD) and is raising series seed to complete pre-clinical development by 2022.

Chronus Health

Every day blood panels are one of the simplest tests that are foundational to healthcare, but patients are still waiting days to receive their lab results. This results in multiple unnecessary visits to the doctor, and delayed time to action. Imagine what we can do if we were to get near-instantaneous results on our blood panels.

Chronus Health’s portable device allows for real-time diagnosis at the point-of-care providing lab results in minutes, dramatically improving time to care and patient outcomes. Their initial launch for Complete Blood Count (CBC) and Complete Metabolic Panel (CMP) accounts for 50% of all blood tests performed.

The prevalent techniques for doing blood test relies of optics and use of mechanical pumps for fluid preparation–this drives up both the size and cost of the devices.Chronus uses electrical methods for sensing and sample preparation that reduces the device size and cost.

Starting with CBC and metabolic panels, Chronus has already demonstrated on-demand blood tests that meet CLIA standards.

Biolumen

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.

Vertical Oceans

90% of the fish consumed in the U.S. comes from China and overseas

Vertical farms are exploding, but why grow lettuce? There’s something else you can grow that generates 12x more revenue, on the same minimal land footprint. No, it’s not marijuana. It’s shrimp – in multi-story vertical oceans.

Humankind’s future will include cultured meat and plant-based meat, but it will also include sustainably grown animal protein. What “self-driving” is to the car industry, “self-cleaning” is to the booming aquaculture industry. Zero waste, zero effluent. With Feed-Conversion-Ratios (FCRs) below 1.0. Vertical Oceans aims to be the world’s first seafood company to reach these hallowed benchmarks. The whole system is run on their biocomputer. Having just moved from their pilot facility to a larger demo facility in Singapore, they’ll be running four harvests this spring and are coming to Chicago soon.

Sundial Foods

The AltProtein space is abuzz, but lacking in products that engender the same finger-licking scrumptiousness of devouring a plate of tasty wings. Sundial Foods developed a novel processing technology for creating plant-based whole cuts of meat — complete with skin, meat and bone. The beauty is in how it ends up on your plate from only eight clean-label ingredients.

Before they were even in our program they were already selling their 1.0 product in the grocery stores in Switzerland. During the IndieBio program, Sundial has increased their degree of automation from 30% to over 70%, and acquired key new hires to help push them towards bigger production. By the end of 2021, they’ll be starting at the Rutgers Food Innovation Center, where Impossible Foods also got their start.

Spintex

Spider silk is renown for being one of the strongest materials on the planet. Light as a feather but stronger than steel (by weight). Scientists have been to make artificial silk for a long time, but have failed to produce them at scale and in industrially amenable conditions.

Spintex has invented an entirely new, scalable method of making silk, using a naturally derived protein. Their critical insight is that, when it comes to spiders, how they spin fibers is as critical, or even more so, as the proteins they use. By mimicking spider spinning, and using a natural protein, Spintex is already surpassing premium silk in performance, with no compromise on look and feel. They’re starting with the textiles industry and will eventually move towards high-value medical applications.

Sequential Skin

Sequential Skin provides the world’s first truly personalized skincare solution. Their easy-to-use at-home test kit uses advanced genetic sequencing technology to understand how your genes, skin microbiome, and environment interact to define the unique needs of your skin. They then match you to tailored skin care products that provide the exact ingredients that will work best for your skin, to boost your overall health.

Reazent

Plants have evolved to live in a symbiotic relationship with microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi present in the soil. As one would expect, soil bacteria play an outsized role in plant growth, but making it a product that the agricultural industry can use en masse has been difficult.

Reazent makes truly biological fertilizers by leveraging this symbiotic relationship between plants and bacteria. By being able to turn on a metabolic switch in bacteria, Reazent can make a fertilizer that is organic and more sustainable than the leading agrochemicals, while also being as (or more) effective. Reazent’s biological fertilizer can be applied to any crop, and is currently being tested in multiple field trials all over the world, and has already acquired a scale up partnership.

Proteinea

NOTE as of February 2, 2023: This company has now pivoted to Fc antibody engineering with their new protein engineering platform. More details to come soon.

The major lesson of the Cleantech 1.0 era was “reduce or avoid the Capex.” Today, in the new Cleantech 2.0 era, we are always looking for companies that can scale up without the huge investment needed into expensive facilities.

Proteinea is a new approach to the field of precision fermentation. You might call it “bioreactor-free.” Rather than growing high-value complex biologics in e coli, or in yeast, or even in insect cells – inside large steel bioreactors – Proteinea uses whole insect larva, growing on low-cost feedstocks. These larva are inoculated and produce the target biologic in every cell, then through downstream processing, the target biologic is extracted and purified. 

With this approach, bioproduction can scale up far more rapidly and with ultra-low capex spend. Right now, Proteinea is working on multiple projects with three corporate partnerships. One is scaling up a polio-vaccine. One is an aquafeed vaccine. And one is a biologic drug. 

Pando Nutrition Inc.

Antibiotics are like nuclear bombs for the microbiome, completely wiping out the bacterial community to promote livestock growth. But what if we can nurture the animal by selectively promoting good microbial consortia while eliminating the bad ones? And what if we can save the planet in the process?

Pando Nutrition is leveraging their designer probiotic as a replacement for antibiotics, and has shown to outperform bacitracin as an antibiotic, while also increasing chicken growth by 10% and making them healthier. Their product has also been shown to reduce methanogenic bacteria in cows, which produces the potent greenhouse gas, methane (which is why their burps are so bad for the planet!). The ultimate goal is to completely eliminate methane-emissions from cows, to create carbon neutral beef.

Ozone Bio

Can Green Chemistry be a high-margin business? The conventional wisdom has been “no.” Bio-Nylon, for example, has a big Green Premium because manufacture is so expensive. Ozone Bio changes the bio-nylon industry’s economics — enabling high margin and massive growth. In addition, they can make Nylon a circular-economy product for the first time, using lignin waste from the paper industry. Their process is so super-scalable that they are already working at 50 liters volume.

OzoneBio is producing an emissions-free, low-cost adipic acid produced from waste feedstocks to make the world’s only bio-nylon 6, 6 that can compete in the open market. No green premiums needed here. The zombie cell technique invented by co-founders Khorcheska Batyrova and Anna Khusnutdinova eliminates the need for costly metal catalysts. This adipic acid is scalable, cost competitive with petroleum-derived products, and can be made from wood-derived aromatics.

OncoPrecision

OncoPrecision can predict a patient’s response to cancer therapies by replicating the tumor microenvironment ex vivo. Their unique, triple co-culture method increases patient-derived cancer cell viability 60x in a 2.5D format that has been validated using real patient data. For patients in dire need of the right cancer treatment the first time, OncoPrecision offers doctors the assurance that decisions made today will make the difference tomorrow.

When time is of the essence, being able to screen potential therapies with your personalized cancer avatar in under 10 days is fast. Doing so with more accuracy than today’s sequencing or organoid approaches is huge. Through their growing list of strategic partnerships, OncoPrecision is screening, selecting, and speeding up the delivery of precision oncology.

Nyoka Design Labs

Nyoka Design Labs is creating an ecologically prosperous future by developing earth-friendly technology to replace standard toxic, wasteful products. They use sustainable biotechnology and material science advances to build inspiring & innovative tech following a circular economy model.

Nyoka is tackling the $4B portable lighting industry by developing two deeply sustainable technologies designed to replace single-use glow sticks and LEDs while simultaneously innovating the packaging required to successfully deploy these technologies for recreational, industrial, and humanitarian purposes.

Scindo

Every year, 8 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans, while only 9% of plastic in the US is recycled. Current recycling methodologies have been unable to break down some of the most commonly produced plastics.

Scindo can recycle the unrecyclable. They are creating a novel biological platform for low-energy, green and economical recycling that turns low-value plastic waste into high-value compounds that can be used in a variety of industries. Specifically, they target some of the most-produced plastics globally that currently cannot be efficiently recycled, so we can put an end to plastics in landfills.

Halomine

15 minutes after cleaning a surface with bleach, the bleach disappears, and a surface can be recolonized by nearby microorganisms. Now ask yourself: how often are surfaces cleaned with disinfectants?

Halomine’s technology acts as a bleach extending agent. Their first product, HaloFilm™, is a simple spray that creates a thin-layer film to hold bleach molecules close to the surface. The film is safe to human touch and can be “recharged” with fresh bleach applications to maintain disinfection. HaloFilm™ extends surface disinfection against fungi, bacteria and viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.

microTERRA

microTERRA has developed a unique functional ingredient for the plant-based food industry, which has no color or taste, enabling customers to deliver nutritional value without sacrificing the texture, taste, or presentation of plant-based products that aim to mirror traditional protein sources.

microTERRA partners with existing aquaculture farms in Mexico to grow lemna, an aquatic plant, in a scalable, affordable, and sustainable way. microTERRA is able to leverage these aquafarms to produce lemna 3-5 times cheaper than competitors, while providing farmers with an extra revenue stream, cleaner aquafarm water, and a reduced water footprint by two thirds. microTERRA’s vision is to create ingredients that instead of using water, are cleaning water.

Microgenesis

Microgenesis has worked with some of the hardest infertility cases there are – women who have undergone and failed multiple rounds of IVF. With a cohort of 287 would-be mothers, over 75% of their patients became pregnant using their proprietary test and nutraceutical regimen. Microgenesis uses microRNA signatures, on swabs from the fertility biome, to diagnose 64 phenotypes. They treat patients with 53 combinations of probiotics, nutraceuticals and diet-change. With personalized nutraceuticals and probiotics it resets fertility in 90 days.

Lypid

We’ve had an on again, off again relationship with fats. One crucial challenge for plant-based foods is that they’re missing the fat. Most of the time, they incorporate coconut oil as an ersatz lard or butter, and it’s simply not hitting the spot. As a B2B company, Lypid is putting a new spin on fats to bring lip-smacking goodness to the exploding plant-based meat category.

Despite huge sales jumps, plant meat is only 2.5% of the protein market. For the next wave of growth, plant meat needs to be more like animal meat.

Vegan oils have different textures, melting points, water content, and flavor-volatility than animal fats. Lypid are the inventors of PhytoFat, a line of fats made from vegan oils that can be tuned to precise textures and melting points. They do this without additives like texturizers, emulsifiers, or hydrogenation. Their secret? Water. Which makes their products healthier, lower cost, and more fat-like.

Liberum Bio

Today, to produce any sort of custom recombinant protein, it takes weeks. This dramatically slows down scientists’ ability to test, iterate, and improve. Liberum’s affordable, benchtop protein printer will cut that time down to a few hours.

Kraken Sense

Kraken Sense is bringing real-time testing, with results in under five minutes, to large-scale food and water systems. Deployable throughout the system — farms, processors, kitchens — their technology blunts the toll that food recalls take by eliminating the time delays in food safety testing. Their in-line autonomous device uses carbon nanotube-based, single-use cartridges to perform strain-specific pathogen detection and quantitation on-site.

Jointechlabs, Inc.

Jointechlabs is a regenerative medicine solutions company based in California providing FDA-cleared technology that empowers safe, cost-effective point-of-care regenerative medicine therapies to eliminate pain and suffering, and make you look and feel better. With 9 granted patents, signed distributors, efficient team, NIH grant, early sales, and several pipeline products, Jointechlabs is creating a regenerative medicine ecosystem as a standard of care.

Their device, MiniTC, has been shown to isolate fat-derived stem cells at in a disposable, closed loop medical device in any clinic setting, with no change in infrastructure. It’s fast gaining adoption in medical aesthetics, plastic and reconstructive surgeries, orthopedics and wound care. This platform is unlocking a therapeutic development program, their first program in clinical development, JTL-T-01, is a proprietary injectable stem cell biologic therapy for osteoarthritis, and is already approved under FDA’s 510k program.

Khepra

With our current technologies, the world’s global production and supply of energy will not be able to meet future demands. This is doubly true as more and more corporate promises are flooding in, aiming to achieve “net zero” by 2050. We need new technologies not only to produce and store energy, but also to move us away from carbon-intensive sources like petroleum.

To meet the diverse needs of a global energy market, Khepra uses fuel production as power storage for excess renewable electricity. Khepra is building reactors that deploy high intensity ultrasound frequencies to take flaked waste — everything from unrecyclable plastics to biomass to cardboard — and even mixed waste — and break the chemical bonds in the waste. This releases valuable chemicals and fuels, which are readily sold to refineries. Zero waste remains — everything in the reactor becomes fuel. Khepra will be working with Alabama Energy Group to upcycle their pulp and paper waste streams into fuels.

Ivy Natal

Ivy Natal is developing a process to create healthy human egg cells from skin cells as a treatment for most cases of infertility. Ivy Natal is developing a novel process to create healthy human egg cells from skin cells, giving women the confidence in their ability to choose whether and when to have a child. Many fertility patients cannot have children except through the use of donor eggs. This can be due to surgery, chemotherapy, maternal age, or genetic conditions. Ivy Natal aims to enable these parents to have genetic children for the first time.

Innate Biology

Dr. Chris Rhodes, the CEO of Innate Biology and nutrition influencer with over 150K followers on TikTok (@thatnutritiondr), wants create products that can support the massive intermittent fasting industry. Innate Biology has invented the world’s first “fasting mimetic” supplement designed from years of human research at UC Davis to give people the benefits of fasting without the fasting. How? By supplementing with a combination of the same beneficial bioactive metabolites your body naturally produces during a prolonged fast.

Unlike their competition, Innate’s fasting mimetic is designed from human research, for maximum human benefit. These are the compounds that evolved in your own body over millennia to induce a “bio-program” of cellular health, regeneration, and longevity. The results? Innate has shown that their fasting mimetic extends lifespan by a stunning 74% in model organisms and creates powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects in human cells.

Huue

Jeans are everywhere. But the blue dye in most jeans are made with chemically synthesized indigo, which not only pollutes our planet (both chemical and and carbon), but the entire process is also toxic, corrosive and highly combustible. We don’t have to deal with these issues when we buy them at the store, but someone (the person who makes your jeans) does.

Huue discovered a way to fix these problems by using a nature-inspired process to create indigo (and other colors) from completely renewable sources like sugar and microbes. They’ve programmed bacteria to help make the most sustainable jeans on the planet, and proven that their dyes perform just as well as the toxic ones. Aheir color platform isn’t stopping at denim–they’ve already moved on to food dyes, and is partnering with Gingko Bioworks to expand even further.

Harmony Baby Nutrition

One in six babies suffer allergies to formula, leading to painful cries and sleepless nights for mother and infant alike. Alternatives such as soy-based formula or hydrolyzed cow’s milk formula are expensive and can also have violent side effects like diarrhea and vomiting.

Harmony Baby Nutrition is a food science-based company that uses precision fermentation to produce human breast milk proteins and create infant formulas that most closely mirror human breast milk. Harmony offers the only dairy-free, allergy-free, and environmentally friendly baby formula in the world.

Multus Media

Multus Media develops the key ingredient to make cultivated meat affordable and profitable. Livestock agriculture contributes to 15% of all greenhouse gas emission globally which is more than the entire transportation sector combined. Cultivated meat brings an 87% reduction in CO2 equivalent emissions, along with 96% less freshwater use and 99% less land use to produce the same amount of meat. ​

This is why our mission is to design growth media that provides a collective benefit to the whole industry by lowering entry barriers, shortening routes to market, and supporting scale. Multus Media is accelerating the forefront of an industry that will replace the devastating impacts of livestock agriculture.

Free to Feed

Free to Feed is dedicated to finding solutions for mothers of food intolerant infants. The Free to Feed allergen test that identifies various food proteins in breast milk, allowing breastfeeding mothers the opportunity to determine what is eliciting a response in the infant. 

Free to Feed aims to offer women a solution other than blindly trialing elimination diets or switching to hypoallergenic formula. Their product will be an alternative and complementary option for mothers to understand what allergens may be present in their breast milk at the time of feeding.

Electro-Active Technologies

We have two major problems plaguing humanity: there are food shortages all around the world, AND we need to increase the proportion of renewable energy and capacity for energy storage. What if we can solve both these challenges, feeding two birds with one scone? 40% of our food is wasted and accounts for a sizeable proportion of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas, while it’s in landfill.

Electro-Active Technologies diverts this food waste into renewable hydrogen using their modular reactor. The liquid fraction of food is converted into hydrogen, while the residual solids can be composted or turned into an animal feed, all with the power of microbial electrolysis. In 2021, they they have a $1M partnership with Southern Company Gas to make distributed, sustainable waste-to-value solutions a reality.

Cybele Microbiome

The beauty industry will tell you: your skin is finnicky. That’s why there are over 1000 products for different face types and beauty enthusiasts can tell you what a pain it is to find the right one for your particular face. Each of our skin biomes have preferences from pH and moisture, to even the balance of bacterial consortia.

Cybele (pronounced SIB-uh-LEE) thinks of cosmetics products not as a mask, but rather as FOOD for your skin biome. They don’t try to drown your skin in new microbes that don’t belong–instead, they feed your skin bacteria to control what they do and produce. One of the products that your skin biome can produce on its own is ceramides, touted in the industry to retain skin moisture. By feeding them PRE-biotics your skin can produce the high-value probiotics you want, in the balance made for your skin.

Chi Botanic

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.

Diadem Biotherapeutics

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.

Diptera.ai

Mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, Zika and malaria infect hundreds of millions every year. Global warming is driving these mosquitoes to spread rapidly, endangering many more.

Diptera.ai’s technology cuts the cost of sterile insect control (SIT) – a natural and highly efficient insect birth control method – to make it a widespread solution against mosquitoes. Diptera.ai combines computer vision and deep biological knowledge to fight mosquitoes and their diseases. Diptera.ai uses non-GMO technology that eliminates the need to build a mosquito rearing and sorting facility near every release site.

Cayuga Biotech

Serious bleeding is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and outcomes are linked to how quickly hemostasis can be achieved. Excessive bleeding is a global threat that can affect all populations, but is especially critical for patients on anticoagulant therapy or those who have a rare bleeding disorder. Cayuga Biotech’s mission is to harness the potential of polyphosphate to address uncontrolled bleeding episodes.

CAY001 is a first-in-class drug which aims to accelerate the body’s natural clotting response even in patients with compromised platelet function. Unlike natural platelets, CAY001 is can be mass-manufactured, is stable at room temperature, and does not require type matching, allowing it to be deployed with first responders.

Carbix

Concrete is one of the oldest forms of building materials, made of limestone aggregates and the cement that binds it. But making the limestone aggregates involves a chemical reaction takes millions of years to do naturally. Carbix has created a reactor that can do this millions of times faster, all while taking emitted carbon and embedding it into the concrete.

This is local, sustainable, carbon-neutral concrete. Their reactor can embed 20X more time CO2 than most of the competitors out there. For every metric ton of concrete produced, more than half of it comprises of sequestered carbon. A single reactor with a 1 cubic meter array can clean up an entire neighborhood of energy production, and produce enough concrete for the foundation of 500 single family homes. With Carbix, all concrete can be carbon-neutral.

Capra Biosciences

In fermentation, biologists focus on free-floating bacteria and yeast for making products today – and if biofilms develop, it’s a big problem.

Capra reverses that equation. In nature, 99% of all bacteria exist in the biofilm state, and at Capra, biofilms are the solution. Biofilms mean more cells packed tightly together, working together as a team. Capra designed their unique bioreactor around this unique insight, resulting resulting in a process that requires less infrastructure, up to 100X water, and minimal downstream processing. These bring cost savings up to 90% on CAPEX and OPEX.

Capra is making high performance lubricants for the $150 billion motor oil market. But first they’re making a bio-Retinol for the cosmetics market.

Canaery

Canaery will be a security company, detecting and identifying dangers in all goods and people – at ports, airports, inspection points, and borders. They don’t use X-Rays, nor do they use cameras. Instead, they will use scent. Absolutely everything in the world gives off a unique signature of volatile compounds, perpetually – a scent-fingerprint.

Being able to detect and identify everything through scent has long been a holy grail in tech. Canaery is a neural interface company from the Rinberg Lab at NYU, the world’s leading lab for how olfactory information is represented in the brain. It can detect critical information for security to health and from farms to ships. Canaery will do for scent what machine vision has done for sight.

California Cultured

Around a decade ago, cocoa bean cells were cultured in giant, 20,000 liter bioreactors – it worked, except for one little problem. To get the cells to grow, they had to use the main toxic ingredient in the herbicide RoundUp.

California Cultured has solved that issue by enticing cocoa cells to grow with stimulation by food ingredients you’d find in any grocery store. Second-time founder Alan Perlstein (Joywell Foods) leads this team, which is going to market rapidly with a D2C subscription model.

The benefits extend beyond social impact. California Cultured’s cocoa cells are less bitter, which helps human health. This is important because conventional chocolate can be 50% sugar to counteract cocoa’s bitterness. California Cultured is aiming to reduce sugar content 10x.

Bucha Bio

Over 3,000 years old, leather is a part of humanity’s shared heritage and the material of choice for creators around the world. But the irreversible damage of the animal and plastic leather industries is unacceptably unsustainable, driving the world’s leading brands and creators into action on a search for a new sustainable solution. Bucha Bio materials are entirely animal & plastic-free while preserving the characteristics that creators love about leather: a classic texture, high durability, and boundless design potential.

P.Happi

P.Happi’s bioactive ingredient continuously protects, restores and balances your intimate skin. Our products calm your urogenital area which can be irritated and damaged by antibiotic therapies and harmful bacteria living in your gut and colonizing women’s intimate area. Unhealthy food, irritation, and changes in pH lead to reduced urogenital comfort making it easier for bad bacteria to grow on your skin.

P.Happi’s ACTIVE COMPONENT kills the harmful bacteria and activates the skin’s natural ability to repair and protect itself, thereby boosting your natural immune system to promote a healthy woman’s intimate microbiome.

Blue Planet Ecosystems

Aquaculture has its problems, with the majority of the fish being fed fishmeal and a constant stream of antibiotics, with all the waste effluent going back into the ocean, affecting the already ailing ocean ecosystem. What if we can recreate the ocean in a tank, decoupling it from our natural ecosystem, so that seafood can be generated just from the sun?

Blue Planet Ecosystems miniaturizes an ecosystem in a closed-loop, recirculating aquaculture system facilitated by computer vision, to turn sunlight into seafood. The sun feeds the algae, which feeds the zooplankton, which feeds the fish (no need for fish meal or pesticides!). Quality is controlled by computer vision, which monitors fish health. Best of all, this can be done on land, in the desert, without needing an entire ocean at your disposal.

BioROSA Technologies Inc.

No blood test exist to confirm autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Wait times for diagnosis range from 3-24 months, and the average age of diagnosis is around 4.5 years, when it’s confirmed by behavioral symptoms. More than 60% of autism health-related costs by be eliminated with earlier diagnosis and treatment, because earlier diagnosis means possible prevention.

BioROSA has developed a biologically-based diagnostic for ASD. This is a one of a kind diagnostic, screening and diagnosisng by using machine learning and targeted metabolic analysis to process biological data into a reliable and accurate diagnosis. BioROSA’s technology is also being used in therapeutic trials to assess pharmacodynamics, patient stratification, and companion diagnostic, providing doctors with the tools they need to help enable earlier detection, diagnosis, and timely treatment. They are currently the highest accuracy solution on the market, at 95% sensitivity and 92% specificity.

BiomeSense

BiomeSense is developing an integrated biosensor & cloud-based bioinformatics platform to massively scale the collection and analysis of gut microbiome data, producing up to 30x the data for <10% of the cost compared to conventional methods. The enabling technology is a proprietary microfluidic biosensor that’s installed in the patient home, passively and continuously sampling the gut microbiome without any input from the patient.

The company’s first market is clinical research, exponentially increasing the data available during clinical trials. After this market, the company plans to rapidly move to clinical use as a companion / traditional diagnostic, and long-term, the ultimate vision is to become a widespread consumer product to enable everyone to track and understand their microbiome for better health.

BioFeyn

Making eating healthy fish sustainable. BioFeyn’s goal is to produce the most sustainable and nutrient-packed farmed fish on the market by optimizing existing ingredients that are already proven to be safe and sustainable. We add value for farmers, feed suppliers, and the environment.

BioFeyn adapts nanotechnologies based on human medicine to deliver nutrients and natural disease preventatives to fish. BioFeyn is pioneering a targeted, modular, delivery mechanism (what we call a “Feyn”) for compounds and nutrients that can be adapted to meet the most critical needs in the industry.

Avisa Myko

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).

Avalo

Half of all plant species are at risk from climate change

The world is changing faster than crops can adapt. To make crops more adaptive, we need a speedier way to alter their gene expression. Most plant genes are unexplored because their role is too subtle to be picked up by GWAS. Avalo.ai are leaders in interpretable machine learning in the realm of agricultural genetics.

This drastically narrows (by around 100x) the scope of candidate genes to validate. Paired with a system to deliver gene regulators via the soil, Avalo.ai attempts to replace the trial-and-error breeding of the past with a computational and programmable responsive system.

Allied Microbiota

Allied Microbiota develops microbes to degrade environmental contaminants. Their technology can tackle the most recalcitrant organic pollutants and break them down into harmless byproducts. Allied Microbiota uses a proprietary microbial strain, ThermO+™, to eliminate polychlorobiphenyls (PCBs) and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), prominent soil contaminants, and dioxins, a prominent water contaminant. Treating contaminated sites restores land value and promotes businesses to build on formerly unusable land.

AsimicA

Biofermentation is often done in batches, because the cells (bacteria, yeast, etc.) that produce the product of interest will eventually mutate and cause the entire batch to become unproductive. This is why batches have to restart, undergoing an idle period, which costs time and money in labor and lost productivity.

Asimica’s solution to this problem is to create microbial stem cells, a technology that constantly generates “young” and productive factory cells, which solves two problems: 1) it prolongs the lifespan of a batch, which means more productivity and less downtime, and 2) more productivity from the constant production of younger factory cells. This can increase the productivity of biofermentation 2-3X per batch.

Aja Labs

Around the developing world, women and girls as young as eight years old are paid just $11 to $25 for selling their hair to supply the hair extension marketplace. The only readily available alternative is plastic synthetic hair, made from petrochemicals, from which consumers often experience toxicity reactions. At worst, these plastics potentially trigger endocrine disruption. Despite all these issues, extensions and weaves are still a fast-growing $7 billion market.

Aja Labs aims to be the ethical and more sustainable choice in hair extensions and weaves. Aja Labs makes human-like hair from plants by utilizing proprietary fiber processing, biotechnology, and microparticle technology to upcycle waste crop matter into premium, healthy hair extension products. The team is engineering sustainable fibers using materials that are better for human and planetary health.

Advanced Microbubbles

The difficult thing about treating tumors is that drugs have trouble penetrating their microenvironment. Chemotherapy itself is already a tricky balance of killing the cancer before it kills the patient, so increasing the dosage is already a risky gamble. Fortunately, the solution lies in the very same microbubbles that come out of your faucet.

Advanced Microbubbles has a patented method to size-isolate microbubbles, which can then be conjugated to any cancer drug. Combined with the humble ultrasound, these drug-bubble conjugates can then be spatially focused on the tumor using a medical device that exists in every clinic. This results in much less toxicity and much more drug penetrating the tumor.

Alora

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