Egg Whites, Rhino Horns, And Stem Cells: IndieBio’s Plan To Bioengineer a greater World

I used to be about to pick out up my cellular phone after I realized I still had rhino horn lotion in all places my hands. It wouldn’t come off. The lotion used to be incredibly thick and creamy, and after I introduced it to my nostril it smelled faintly of a musty outdated sofa. once I ultimately gathered sufficient tissues to wipe the lotion off, i spotted that my fingers had been especially softer. No rhinos were harmed within the technique of softening my fingers, on the other hand.

I was checking out IndieBio, a new biotech accelerator in San Francisco the place early-stage biotech ventures get mentorship, get entry to to lab house, and seed funding. after I visited out the gap, IndieBio had been open for simply two weeks, but was once already buzzing with scientists engaged on tasks that sound like they are straight out of Silicon Valley’s collective imaginative and prescient of an ideal future. the whole lot a science-based startup would possibly want is available within the space, from general biotech lab equipment (centrifuges and numerous machines with three-letter names) to a cell culture space and a delegated hardware room.

“we want everyone who comes via to feel extra entrepreneurial and start companies, even though they fail,” says Arvind Gupta, co-founder of IndieBio and companion at SOS Ventures. The hope is that IndieBio’s strengthen can enable biotech entrepreneurs to flourish without feeling the want to work inside of university or large corporate infrastructures.

When Gupta and his co-founder Ryan Bethencourt—a former senior director of prize construction at XPRIZE—speak concerning the accelerator, they have a tendency to explain it when it comes to the way it may lead to solutions that offer planetary peace and longer, fitter lives for us all—salvation through science, essentially.

“we don’t need to turn out in a category battle. we would like everybody to have food, easy water, and a long existence expectancy,” says Gupta.

Taking a tour of the lab, it is not exhausting to get swept up in the promise of the startups within, a lot of which are engaged on synthetic biology projects which are best now possible as a result of advances within the container which have made biotech equipment cheaper and faster than ever before.

The startups in IndieBio are all working on giant-image concerns. Pembient, the corporate that concocted my rhino horn lotion, desires to fight animal poaching by means of developing artificial variations of the gadgets that poachers want—beginning with rhino horns. In South Africa by myself, 1,215 rhinos had been poached in 2014, causing the world to lose 4% of the whole rhino inhabitants. a part of the problem is that rhino horns are used as conventional medicine (for reducing fevers, amongst other issues) in components of Asia.

Pembient’s first prototype product is a powder which is genetically similar to actual rhino horn. subsequent, the startup needs to create a full 3-D printed horn, using the powder as a substrate. “right now, we’re taking the biochemical way, however we’re technologically agnostic. perhaps someday we will do tissue engineering. no matter works for the market,” says co-founder George Bonaci. ultimately, Pembient plans to work on different in-demand animal merchandise.

Sitting alongside Pembient in the lab is Clara foods, a company taking a relatively an identical strategy to a distinct issue: the unsustainable and merciless nature of factory farms. instead of manufacturing rhino horns, Clara meals is making lab-grown egg whites. “We choose each and every different’s brains. it can be almost certainly the mostly helpful thing right here, that everybody shares,” says cofounder Arturo Elizondo.

via producing egg whites in the lab, Clara hopes to create more reasonably priced and consistent egg whites which can be salmonella-free. Plus, no manufacturing unit farms are important.

The co-founders, who met at a meals tech convention, are working on a proof of concept, reconstituting the egg white’s major proteins in the lab. “We’re a long way along on paper. The laborious part is ensuring it tastes exactly like an egg white,” says Elizondo. “We want to produce a product equivalent with regards to culinary residences. there’s a chef downstairs in the constructing that wishes to bake with it.”

by the tip of their 100-day keep at IndieBio, the Clara foods founders need to prove that they are able to reconstitute an egg white in yeast, and get the taste proper, too.

just about everyone in the accelerator is bioengineering something that was once once unsustainable or impractical, it seems. A startup referred to as Bioloop is genetically engineering bacteria to overproduce cellulose and bioplastic, all to create sustainable textiles that don’t require acres of lands and a number of pesticides. “We wish to give people what they need, and push the unhealthy issues out of the equation,” says cofounder Jennifer Kaehms.

Then there are the entire clinical biotech startups. They embody Orphidia, which is making a “lab on a chip” to diagnose dozens of ailments with a single drop of blood; Extem, a startup that has provide you with a technique to mass produce stem cells in a lot better quantities than are at the moment available; and Affinity, which aims to deliver down the price of creating new biopharmaceutical medicine.

These are bold projects, and IndieBio is going to in the end need a greater space (the current area could be very comfy) . quickly, the accelerator plans to open a 15,000-square-foot space downtown. along with the San Francisco accelerator, IndieBio additionally runs a sister application in Cork, ireland.

“The goal here is to triple the lifespan of human beings. we will not have triple the natural resources, so we need to be more efficient,” says Gupta.