Date: 12th June 2019
The pursuit of therapeutic advances is at the forefront of synthetic biology and one emerging area is the engineering of microbes to deliver a specific function or therapeutic agent, so-called ‘living medicines’. Whilst inroads are starting to be made, the route to the clinic has not yet began in earnest and Synlogic Inc, based in Massachusetts, US, is a clinical-stage company which is applying synthetic biology to microbes, to deisgn novel so-called Synthetic Biotic™ medicines.
With their sights firmly set on progressing living medicines to the clinic, they have announced an $80M investment by the organism company Ginkgo Bioworks, also based in Massachusetts. Synlogic’s platform for designing and building living medicines will complement Ginkgo’s cell programming platform and will allow optimisation of strains at large scales. The platform collaboration should accelerate drug candidates suitable for preclinical trials and advance treatments for patients.
