“The ability to program living cells to sense and respond to treat complex diseases has great potential.”

US biotechnology company Ginkgo Bioworks has announced that it has made a $80 million investment in synthetic biology company Synlogic.

As part of the deal, Gingko will form a long-term strategic platform collaboration with Synlogic. Synlogic will use Ginkgo’s cell programming platform to help develop its pipeline of engineered microbes.

The agreement inked provides an $80 million equity investment at a premium in Synlogic by Ginkgo.

Synlogic (@synlogic_tx)specialises in “living medicines” – bacteria that can be found in the gut, which can be reprogrammed to treat major diseases and rare genetic disorders.

“This collaboration significantly enhances Synlogic’s Synthetic Biotic strain optimisation capabilities and builds on the successful pilot programme we began with Ginkgo in late 2017. It enables us to advance high-quality candidate strains into development more efficiently and provides technology and resources that will fuel pipeline expansion as we continue to advance our existing clinical programmes,” said Aoife Brennan, M.B., Ch.B., Synlogic’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

She added: “Ginkgo has built a world-class infrastructure for programming and optimising microbial strains at a large scale which will be instrumental in the development of our portfolio of Synthetic Biotic medicines. We are excited to establish this agreement and to work together to advance meaningful treatments for patients.”

“The ability to programme living cells to sense and respond to treat complex diseases has great potential. Synlogic’s platform for designing and developing living medicines that can treat a wide range of dynamic diseases has the potential to be transformative to the next generation of pharmaceuticals,” said Jason Kelly, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ginkgo Bioworks (@Ginkgo).

He added: “Based on the success of our pilot work with the Synlogic team, we’re doubling down on our collaboration to grow this powerful engine for the future of medicine together.”

Elsewhere, Ginkgo also announced that Synlogic is putting up $30m to source synthetic biology services from Ginkgo over the next five years under a foundry services agreement.

Synlogic has exclusive rights to any Synthetic Biotic medicines that it develops as part of the collaboration and to intellectual property covering such products.

Matthew McKnight, Chief Commercial Officer at Gingko Bioworks, is a confirmed speaker at SynBio Markets (Berlin, 18-19 November 2019) where he will be discussing the current investment trends around synthetic biology.

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