The room where bio partnerships get made. Pharma BD, corporate venture, and 2,000 founders โ all in Silicon Valley, May 3โ6 in 2027.
Joined August 2012
- Tweets33.2K
- Following3.6K
- Followers53.1K
- Likes1.4K
SynBioBeta retweeted
Necrotic enteritis is a $6 billion problem for the chicken industry.
It starts with a microbe that belongs there. Clostridium perfringens lives in every healthy chicken's gut. But when a bird gets stressed, from a feed change or a vaccination, it turns into a gut-punching parasite. It starts making two toxins that break open the gut lining and pull nutrients out for itself.
On Sept 29, BiomEdit got @USDA approval for the first engineered microbe that engrafts in the gut and secretes an antibody to stop it. Not by killing C. perfringens, and not with an antibiotic. By neutralizing the toxins and stopping its mechanism of action in its tracks.
That mechanism is where the $6 billion comes from, and it hits farmers three ways:
- Feed conversion. Most birds don't die. They just absorb less of what they eat and need about 11% more feed per pound of meat. Feed is 65 to 75% of the cost of raising a broiler, so this hits the bottom line directly.
- Weight. Birds with the subclinical form run about 12% lighter at market.
- Mortality. In the worst cases, the birds die.
So does it work? In a challenge study with Southern Poultry Research Group, mortality fell from 13.1% to 6.6%, a 48.7% reduction. Treated birds also converted feed better and gained more weight. Same 42 days, same feed bill, more chicken.
The product is already in more than 35 million broilers across three major US producers. That data comes in around January 2027.
It's also proof of concept. You can deliver a microbe, have it engraft, and have it make a therapeutic right where the disease is.
This is just the first of many potential applications for BiomEdit's microbe engineering platform for drug delivery. Next up are rumen strains that cut methane, gut enzymes that break down inflammatory factors, and dogs with IBD, where an antibody made inside the gut can stay out of the rest of the body.
I got the chance to speak with Aaron Schacht earlier this month to learn about what BiomEdit is building and where they see this technology going. His take:
"We have an N of 1. If you think back to the first antibody that was ever made, this might be the same moment for this modality."
You can read more on the @SynBioBeta website, link in the comments.
๐ค Made with AI
SynBioBeta retweeted
Weeding a garden is the most labor intensive part of any farming endeavor, whether that be growing flowers or food for a million people. What if you could spray a protein that only hits the weed, leaves the crop standing, and is gone before the next planting?
That's what Quercus Biosolutions is building. I got the chance to catch up with Jonathan Lightner earlier this month to learn more about their recent $5M raise and their aspirations for a new era of plant management.
Twenty years ago a Midwest grower planted, waited for the weeds, drove through once with glyphosate, and everything died. Today that same field takes three to five herbicides in combination to get the same control.
Every herbicide works by jamming one piece of plant machinery the plant can't live without. That target is the site of action. By the 1980s the industry had found about twenty. Then it stopped. 21 of the 31 known sites of action are now compromised.
As Jon Lightner put it to me, when you have a niche, nature finds things that fit the niche. A weed can evolve resistance in a few years. A new chemistry takes more than 11 years and about $300M to reach the market. Evolution is moving at twice the speed of the industry.
Part of the reason is how herbicides get found. You push millions of small molecules past a plant and keep whatever kills it. Small molecules need a pocket to wedge into. Many of the most interesting plant proteins don't have one. The list of sites of action is a record of what small molecules could reach, not the plant biology worth attacking.
Pharma hit the same wall and got past it with proteins. Quercus is bringing that toolkit to the field, designing mini-protein binders with an AI platform originally built for human drug discovery.
The mechanism of action is where it gets interesting. A protein doesn't have to compete for the active site the way a small molecule does. In some of their advanced programs, Jon says the active site is physically too small for their protein to reach, so it has to be inhibiting the enzyme some other way. A weed that evolved resistance in that pocket isn't necessarily protected from a protein gripping a different surface.
Proteins also solve the problem that has haunted crop protection. Jon's view is that half the unintended consequences come from molecules that persist too long. Proteins have the opposite problem. Most organisms that encounter one treat it as food. So Quercus designs for stable enough, but not too stable:
- Rainfast fast
- Gone before the fall cover crop goes in
- No target in butterflies or mammals walking through the field
- Small and expressible, because cost scales with size
Jon ran biotech at @DuPont_News Pioneer and was CSO at Genus PLC. Co-founder @EnergyCrisp founded @BensonHillInc. Their $5M seed, led by @serraventures, includes farmer-backed funds like @IowaCorn and @sdcorn.
The full story is available on the @SynBioBeta website, link in the comments.
๐ค Made with AI
SynBioBeta retweeted
Huge congratulations to Ilya Captain on another sold-out DataDrivenPharma West.
I've been coming to Ilya's events since early 2024. This year every conversation landed on the same question: what makes data worth having?
As a recovering data scientist, I've watched the field go from R and Python, to Snowflake and Tableau, to today's agentic, chat-based era. Go to most bio events and you'd assume AI is everywhere. Talk to the people implementing it and you get the real picture.
That's who fills #ddpwest26. Bioinformaticians, biostatisticians, data scientists, and data vendors from @Amgen, @genentech, @GileadSciences, @LillyPad, and @AstraZeneca. Asked what's holding AI back, the room's biggest answer was "Data." Not models.
Three questions kept coming up.
1. What data are we missing?
The design space for proteins, DNA, and RNA is massive, and we've measured a fraction of it. Even big pharma's best models are only proven in the chemical space they've already worked in. No single company has enough data on its own.
Accuracy drops as molecules move away from the training data. The practical rule for agents: stop iterating when uncertainty gets high.
2. What data actually helps you decide?
Useful data gets you to a defensible go or no-go, fast. Most late-stage failures aren't chemistry. Teams didn't understand enough about who took the drug.
That puts weight on negative data. Every success is probably an edge case. Most of what we learn is failure, buried in an ELN. The catch is trust. Was the hypothesis wrong, or did someone mix up the tubes? Data that doesn't reproduce should be rerun, not cleaned.
Benchmarks are one way to price data. Show a frontier model fails on it, then show the lift after training. But every seller picks the benchmark they win on. The simpler test: 100,000 curated cancer patients sells itself. Raw records from 1,000 hospitals doesn't.
3. Can anyone actually use it?
A typical multimodal program spends 8 of 9 months on setup and 2 to 4 weeks asking questions. The first question pays for the setup. The twentieth is nearly free.
Batch effects go unsolved because wet lab records were never linked to the analysis. Agents rebuild context from scratch every morning. Reasoning without memory produces answers. Reasoning with memory accumulates science.
The value sits where all three meet. Data where models are blind, tied to a decision, in a form someone can use.
Can't wait for next year's DataDrivenPharma West. Looking forward to seeing it even bigger than this year.
#DataDrivenPharma #DrugDiscovery #AI #Bioinformatics
SynBioBeta retweeted
Biotech still runs on who owns the patent and who approves the drug.
That was my takeaway from @alexkesin's session at DataDrivenPharma West last week.
Alex wrote one of the most widely shared analyses of China's biotech rise this year, and it has become a reference point in the policy debate. He also co-hosts @approvedfm with [@MatthewPech], a podcast on how drugs get discovered, developed and sold. He walked a room of operators through where the value sits now.
Four quick hits:
- 1:3. Doing the work in China costs a half to a third of the US price.
- Rent, don't sell. Beijing's new export controls block the sale of biotech platforms. Licensing, partnerships and contract research stay open.
- 3x. China tripled its university patent conversion rate in two years, to 10.1%.
- 8% to 32%. China's share of the global early-stage pipeline, from 2015 to 2024.
The first hit explains the last five years. China got cheap and fast, and the West bought what it built. Most of those deals were fast-follows on targets Western labs discovered. The West owned the original IP and rented China's speed.
The other three point to the next five.
The export controls dropped the same morning as the session. Read them next to the new five-year plan, which makes biotech and biomanufacturing a national priority through 2030. The strategy looks clear to me. Generate IP faster than the US, keep ownership at home, and let the world license it.
Pipeline share has quadrupled. Patents are moving out of universities and into companies. Nine out of ten still sit unused, so there's plenty of room to grow.
Patents are still the currency. Regulators still set the exchange rate. The FDA turned away a Chinese PD-1 copycat because its trial ran only on Chinese patients. To get paid in the US, you still need FDA approval and a partner who can launch here.
What changes is who holds the paper. When the West generated the IP, licensing meant Western companies owned the value and paid for speed. As more IP is generated and kept in China, the same deal structure sends more value the other way. The West ends up renting the molecule instead of owning it.
This is a gold rush for intellectual property. The question is who can generate novel IP in a specific area, and do it first.
Therapeutics is the beachhead. The US market pays enough for new drugs that the long road through the FDA still earns a return.
In this gold rush, anyone can be a miner. The fastest ones will have the best maps.
And maps only come from data.
#ddpwest26
SynBioBeta retweeted
๐ฅ Week 43! 40 Bay Area Bio-economy events, Oct 19-25 ๐ฅ
๐ docs.google.com/spreadsheetsโฆ ๐
New this week: the sheet has two tabs.
๐
By Day runs in calendar order, so you can plan your week.
๐๏ธ By Topic groups every event by field, so you can jump straight to yours.
๐๐ฌ ๐ง๐ข๐ฃ๐๐
11 ๐ Drug Discovery & Trials
9 ๐งฌ Genomics, Proteins & Omics
7 ๐ Capital & Dealmaking
5 ๐ฑ Industrial & Environmental Bio
3 ๐ฅ Clinical & Care Delivery
3 ๐ง Neuro & BCI
1 ๐ช Human Performance & Wellness
1 ๐ธ Women's Health & Fertility
๐๐ฌ ๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ง
11 Seminar / Lecture
6 Webinar
5 Workshop / Hands-on
4 Mixer / Social / Outdoor
4 Panel / Salon
4 Vendor Lunch & Learn
3 Conference / Symposium
2 Pitch / Demo Day
1 Info Session
๐๐ฌ ๐๐ข๐๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ก
12 Virtual
11 San Francisco
5 Berkeley
4 San Carlos
3 South San Francisco
3 Stanford
1 Fremont
1 Oakland
๐๐ฌ ๐๐๐ฌ
7 Mon Oct 19
7 Tue Oct 20
13 Wed Oct 21
10 Thu Oct 22
2 Fri Oct 23
1 Sun Oct 25
SynBioBeta retweeted
100+ people signed up for tonight's Laptop and Learn in Walnut Creek. For a Thursday night event east of the tunnel, that's kind of wild.
The format is simple. People in bio show each other how they actually use AI at work. One-minute pitch to the room, then 15-minute demos around laptops. No slides.
Here's who's demoing tonight:
Rupert Yip and Sarosh Naseem of Mithrl will show Mithrl-1, their biomedical world model.
Frederik Schulz of @jgi is bringing an AI scientist benchmark and next-generation bioinformatics tools.
Jim Dickey of Agentis will walk through their AI approach to designing antibodies and nanobodies against cancer neoantigens, on a timeline of weeks after biopsy.
Sean Jungbluth of BioKEA is demoing a workflow that goes from a prompt to a 3D-printed biological tool prototype.
Robin Green, founding scientist at a stealth startup, will show data pipelines built in Claude and how wet lab scientists with no coding background can build their own tools.
Erika Trauzzi of @Agilent will show how to pitch a product idea in one step.
Dion Whitehead of metapages is bringing open source AI artifacts that let you build with any AI while keeping control of your data.
Ahmad Salehi of Donor Network West will talk through organ donation in Northern California.
Flavius Miron of Human Squared will show AI creators producing short-form video for brands.
Plus demos from Zack Zheng of Vazyme, Haotian Guo of Ailurus Bio, and a Saint Francis High School student who built a de novo protein design pipeline targeting avian flu.
5:00 drinks and networking
6:00 demos, three rounds
7:00 more drinks, more networking
Free, thanks to our friends at @Acrisure and @humaninterest. Steps from Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre BART.
Request a spot: luma.com/xioobrw7
See you at 1350 Treat Blvd tonight.
@SynBioBeta #AI #biotech #synbio
SynBioBeta retweeted
Boston lab space is 28.9% empty. The Bay Area is at 30.7%. Houston is at 26.3%.
The XBI is up more than 20% this year. So why is no one moving back into these labs?
Honestly, it shouldn't surprise anyone. Back in 2021 and 2022, the whole game was cramming as many researchers and benches into a building as you could. A few things changed that pretty fast.
- AI-native biotechs lease about a third less space per person.
- Pharma is licensing molecules and sending manufacturing overseas. When we ran a talk at MBC Biolabs, we heard that close to 80% of the companies there outsource some or all of their manufacturing to Chinese firms.
- Later-stage companies want office, not lab. They're managing assets already in trials.
The lab of 2026 just looks different. Teams are smaller. The science is AI-native. And a lot of the actual work isn't happening in Boston or SF anymore. It's happening in Shanghai and Suzhou.
The R&D that does happen here is smaller, leaner, and set up to scale out somewhere else. Those teams don't need rows of benches. They need machines. If your building has 500 benches but not a single mass spec, liquid handler, or flow cytometer, nobody's going to want it. The equipment is the real bottleneck for early-stage work.
The few groups that still want big footprints are building them around robots and power. @LilaSciences grabbed about 244,000 sq ft at Alewife Park in Cambridge for autonomous labs. @medra_ai put hundreds of robots into a concrete industrial building in SF.
So here's the uncomfortable part. These buildings were built for a tenant that doesn't exist anymore. That tenant isn't coming back. Leaving the space empty and hoping 2021 returns isn't a plan.
You have to rebuild it for who actually needs space now.
- Deep tech and hard tech. I've been talking with groups here in SF, and a lot of robotics and hardware teams are looking for exactly this kind of space. Strong floors, real power, good ventilation. Retrofitting a lab is way faster than building new.
- Incubators built around machines, not benches. Rip out the bench rows and put in the instruments early-stage companies can't afford on their own.
MBC Biolabs is already doing this. Shared instruments, shared equipment, small teams that don't need 50,000 sq ft.
Landlords who follow that blueprint will fill their buildings. The ones waiting on 2021 are going to keep sitting empty.
SynBioBeta retweeted
If you're building in biomanufacturing and looking for someone to lead your round, look no further than Jonathan Mercado.
He drives the thesis at @FirstBight Ventures, a fund that leads seed through Series A, takes board seats, and is about as founder friendly as investors get.
First Bight is a Houston fund that invests at the hardest point in industrial biotech: right after proof of concept, right before commercial scale. That's the stretch where great science runs out of runway. It writes checks from $100K to $5M, and its first fund backed seven biomanufacturing companies across chemicals, materials, food ingredients, agriculture, and energy.
The thesis is built on studying failure. First Bight's "Industrial Biomanufacturing Graveyard" report looked at 30 failed biomanufacturing ventures and found that more than 80% didn't fail on the technology. They picked the wrong market, underestimated what it costs to sell, or assumed customers would switch. Jonathan's version is simple: in this space, the science is rarely the bottleneck. Asset selection and go-to-market strategy are.
In 2027 he joins us at @SynBioBeta as a speaker.
What the First Bight portfolio has been up to:
- Led the $5M seed round for @Algenesis_, which makes plant-based, biodegradable materials
- Backing @Visolis3, @iMicrobesInc, @CapraBio, @PersephoneBio, @r2dio, and VIA Biofuels
- Three portfolio companies, Visolis, Industrial Microbes, and Algenesis, landed a combined $5.25M from the Department of Defense's Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program
- Launched BioWell, a Houston bioindustrial accelerator, which took over a 33,000 square foot pilot plant in Richmond, Texas, to give startups real fermentation capacity
Jonathan came to venture the long way, through the bench and the tools business:
- @bcmhouston, where he earned his PhD in molecular and cell biology (2015-2020), after undergrad at @UTAustin
- IsoPlexis (2021-2023), the single-cell proteomics company whose platform measured what individual immune cells secrete. He was its "single-cell evangelist," working with researchers and partners on translational projects, through IsoPlexis' 2023 merger with Berkeley Lights
- @brukercellular (2023), after Bruker acquired the combined company, managing scientific alliances
- First Bight Ventures (2023-present), starting as an associate and now a principal, sourcing, evaluating, and supporting early-stage biomanufacturing companies
This year he wants to talk about something founders rarely hear from investors: how to fund early biomanufacturing through revenue-generating partner projects instead of another dilutive round. He wants to be the investor a founder calls last, after the decks are done, when the question is what to build and who will actually buy it.
If you're building in chemicals, materials, ingredients, or ag and trying to cross the gap from pilot to plant, Jonathan is the person to find.
Come find him in San Jose, May 3-6th.
SynBioBeta retweeted
If you work in biomanufacturing in the Bay Area, the @agilebiofoundry Fall 2026 Industry Day in Berkeley on October 26 is a must attend.
Registration closes this Monday, October 12.
ABF is the DOE national lab consortium building tools, processes, and partnerships for industrial biomanufacturing. Industry Day is where companies bring real scale-up problems and the labs show what they can do about them.
Industry perspective talks from:
- Magdalena Stoeva of @powbio
- @markvanzee of @sakubiosciences
- Michael Wang of @ZymoChem
The day also includes:
- Lightning talks on synbio, AI, automation, and scale-up
- Panels on AI and automation, host onboarding, and metabolic intermediates
- The launch of the ABF Industry Accelerator
- 1:1 meetings with ABF scientists
- An optional tour of a local scale-up facility
Hotel Shattuck Plaza, 8 AM to 5 PM. Some sessions stream virtually, but the roundtables and 1:1s are the reason to show up in person.
Register: agilebiofoundry.org/fall-202โฆ
๐ค Made with AI
SynBioBeta retweeted
Dr. Kate Sixt led biotechnology research and engineering for the Pentagon.
Now she's helping set the science agenda for American agriculture.
In 2027 she joins us at @SynBioBeta as Executive Director of the Office of the Chief Scientist at the @USDA.
Few people have seen biotech from as many sides as Kate.
She trained as a scientist, with a PhD in biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology from @HopkinsMedicine. She added a master's in law from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.
Then she spent more than a decade at the @IDA_org doing national security research, rising to Assistant Director of its Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division.
From there she became Principal Director for Biotechnology in the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering. She led the department's work to advance military capabilities through biotech and keep the US ahead, including helping kick off the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program to scale domestic biomanufacturing.
At USDA she now supports the Chief Scientist on the department's top science priorities:
- Agricultural systems and technology
- Precision nutrition and food quality and safety
- Agricultural economics to improve farmer profitability
- New domestic markets for plant and animal products
She also leads work on research security and scientific integrity, and teaches as an adjunct professor at Georgetown's @georgetownsfs.
At SynBioBeta, Kate will bring that view to our growing agriculture programming, where biotech, food security, and biosecurity for plants and animals all meet. She's also helping us find the experts doing the most exciting work in the space.
If you work on ag biotech, biomanufacturing, or biosecurity, Kate is the person to find.
Come find her in San Jose, May 3-6th, alongside a growing roster of government speakers.
SynBioBeta retweeted
More than 60% of farmers who use biologicals say they have no idea whether they worked.
Joshua Geilhufe thinks that's the biggest opportunity in agriculture. And he's one of the few people who has worked every side of the problem: the lab, the economics, and the sale.
In 2027 he's back at @SynBioBeta as Principal at 838 Advisory.
Josh has spent nearly 20 years inside the companies that built industrial biotech and synthetic biology:
- @CodexisInc (4+ years): a pioneer of directed evolution, whose engineered enzymes are used to make pharmaceuticals at commercial scale. Josh worked on an enzyme built for industrial carbon capture.
- Oakbio (2+ years): an early startup using bacteria to turn CO2 into chemicals and bioplastics. Josh built its first techno-economic model and brought in partners including Shell Canada and Holcim.
- Independent consulting (4 years): helping industrial bio and climate tech companies win federal funding, and reviewing 20+ grant proposals for the @ENERGY Department.
- @Zymergen (4+ years): the Emeryville company that paired machine learning with lab automation to engineer microbes, and went public in 2021. Josh built partnerships across agriculture and industry, including a flagship deal with @FMCCorp.
- @Ginkgo (2024): which acquired Zymergen. Josh launched new enterprise service offerings during the transition.
He trained as a chemist at @Stanford and earned an MBA from @Georgetown.
Since 2024 he has run 838 Advisory, building the commercial engine for deep tech companies in ag biotech, industrial decarbonization, biomanufacturing, and advanced materials.
Last May he moderated our main stage AgTech panel on speeding up crop adaptation to climate change, with @Bayer4Crops, @corteva, @pivotbio, @Revive_Restore, and Moby on stage.
This year he wants to go deeper on why biologicals are so hard to buy with confidence. Weather drives more than half of the year-to-year yield swing on any acre, so farmers can't tell whether a product worked. What they told him they want is simple: "If you can tell me where this thing won't work and why."
Josh sees synthetic biology as the answer. "If biology is programmable, then why can't I design a biofertilizer that is more active at high temperature and less active at low temperature?"
If you're building ag biologicals, precision application tools, or any deep tech that has to find its first enterprise customer, Josh is the person to find.
Come find him in San Jose, May 3-6th.
SynBioBeta retweeted
Before most investors knew what to call synthetic biology, @drjennyrooke was already backing it.
She was an early investor in @Zymergen and @CaribouBio, both of which went public in 2021. Her track record also includes Accuri (acquired by @BDandCo), Topaz (acquired by @sanofi), and Intabio (acquired by @SCIEXnews).
In 2027 she joins us at @SynBioBeta as founder and managing director of @genoaventures.
Genoa invests early where biology meets technology:
- Research tools
- Diagnostics
- Ag and food biotech
- Industrial biotech
Why that niche? "The venture community was missing transformative companies outside traditional biotherapeutic markets with solutions that didn't fit into existing categories," she said when Genoa closed its $84M second fund.
Her route in: a physics degree from @GeorgiaTech and a PhD in genetics from @Yale. Then pharma and biotech consulting at @McKinsey, and corporate development and R&D leadership at U.S. Genomics.
She moved into venture in 2006 as a Kauffman Fellow at Fidelity Biosciences. Then she built the investing function at the @gatesfoundation, funding genetic engineering, diagnostics, and synthetic biology companies.
In 2014 she started what became Genoa as a syndicate on @AngelList. It grew into the largest life sciences syndicate on the platform and one of its highest-performing in any sector.
What gets her excited: "When I see companies developing new tools that make more and better data for researchers."
Her view on where the field still falls short, from JPM this year: "Tools powering life sciences and healthcare lag far behind the complexity of real biology."
She sits on the boards of @InterVennBioSci and Aqtual, and on the Board of Trustees of @jacksonlab.
Our community knows her well. She was a guest on the SynBioBeta podcast back in 2019, and last year she spoke in our AIxBIO track on AI for protein dynamics and multi-cell models.
If you're building research tools, diagnostics, or platforms that turn biology into better data, Jenny is the investor to find.
Come find her in San Jose, May 3-6th.
SynBioBeta retweeted
Jose Carlos Garcia-Garcia has spent the past 16 years building the biology side of one of the largest consumer products companies in the world.
That company is @ProcterGamble: $87 billion in annual sales, with Tide, Pampers, Gillette, Crest, and Olay in its portfolio, and a long history of building brands on enzymes.
In 2027 he's back at @SynBioBeta as R&D Senior Director and Research Fellow at P&G.
His route in started in Havana. From 1994 to 1999 he was a scientist at Cuba's @CIGBCuba. He then earned his PhD at @okstate as a @HHMINEWS predoctoral fellow, did his postdoc in medical microbiology at @HopkinsMedicine, and became an assistant professor there.
In 2010 he joined P&G as a senior scientist. He became an R&D director and principal scientist in 2015, then senior director and research fellow in 2024.
His expertise is the microbiome and host-microbe interactions. His portfolio has covered oral, skin, cardiometabolic, and vaginal health, plus biology-made ingredients:
- Biosurfactants
- Biopolymers
- Bioactives
- Flavors and fragrances
He describes his job as "steering the biotechnological revolution" at P&G. "We're transforming the way consumer products are manufactured, distributed, and disposed."
He does a lot of it with outside partners. He calls himself a "passionate proponent of open innovation" and has spent years managing collaborations with academia, startups, and smaller companies.
"Partnership and collaboration are part of P&G's DNA," he said on the @messaginglab Grow Everything podcast this year. "When you partner with P&G, your innovation doesn't live in just one product."
Our audience knows him. In 2025 he joined two panels on how synbio startups partner with the Fortune 500. Last May he spoke three times: a fireside on bio-derived ingredients, a breakout on surfactants, and a main stage panel on AI protein design. He also sits on the council of the @EngBioRC.
If you're working on the microbiome, biosurfactants, biopolymers, bioactives, or fragrance molecules, or using fermentation, enzyme engineering, or AI protein design to make better ingredients, Jose Carlos is the person to find.
Come find him in San Jose, May 3-6th.
SynBioBeta retweeted
As we enter the post-climate change future, where fluctuations in rain and temperature become the new normal, agriculture must be reengineered from the ground up.
@ghepardolesto is doing the reengineering.
In 2027 he joins us at @SynBioBeta as CEO and co-founder of Rainbow Crops.
The problem is that climate resilience is not a single-gene trait. "Heat tolerance, drought resilience, input efficiency are not single-gene problems," Giacomo says. "They require understanding networks of genes."
Traditional breeding gets there slowly, and by chance. "Breeding is about taking genetic diversity introduced by nature. The problem is that it's random and slow."
Rainbow Crops' Trait Foundry platform does it on purpose. AI and systems biology map the plant as a network of genes and pick the best targets. Multiplex CRISPR hits dozens of genes at once. Precision breeding and automated phenotyping then screen for the combinations that work, like yield plus drought tolerance.
"What has not been done yet is trying to combine at once so many of these edits."
It isn't easy. Field trials are at the mercy of the weather. "You might have one year of bad luck and you have to throw away, you have to wait another year."
The company spun out of @VIBLifeSciences' Center for Plant Systems Biology at @ugent in 2025. Since then:
- A $7M grant from the @gatesfoundation for heat- and drought-resilient corn, sorghum, and rice
- A โฌ9.7M seed round led by @LIFTT_VC, with @Corteva (via Corteva Catalyst), Maia Ventures, AIF, PINC, and VIB
- A corn partnership with Vylor, the seed and genetics company spun off from Corteva, announced in September
Giacomo has done this before. He started in venture capital at @KurmaPartners, then co-founded Meiogenix in 2010, right after his PhD. He did a deal with @Bayer and exited. He has also founded BliNK Therapeutics and Key Neurosciences.
His PhD was in protein engineering and bioinformatics. "Maybe in the past we called it bioinformatics. Now it's called AI. It's the same."
Why crops? "If you improve the genetics of a major crop, the impact can scale across millions of hectares and people."
At SynBioBeta, Giacomo wants to meet:
- Seed companies, from majors like Corteva, Bayer, and Syngenta to smaller players with strong genetic material but no editing platform
- AI, sequencing, and synthetic biology startups open to partnerships
- Investors looking at ag and climate resilience
SynBioBeta retweeted
The most active early-stage investor in Texas is coming to SynBioBeta 2027!
@DrLuisEMartinez is a Venture Principal at @CapitalFactory. He co-manages its healthcare and life sciences practice with @DrewYashar and helps run deal flow across the firm's funds.
Capital Factory by the numbers:
- Most active early-stage investor in Texas since 2010, per PitchBook
- 800+ companies in its network and portfolio
- 130+ companies in its flagship Texas Fund, with Texas Fund II launched in 2026
- 5 unicorns and a decacorn, per Dealroom
- Three IPOs in under three years: @Int_Machines, @voyagertech_, and @Firefly_Space
- Over $500M in non-dilutive government funding won by portfolio companies
And in bio, it bet early. Capital Factory was in @colossal, now its most valuable holding at a reported $10.3B valuation. "We were always happy to have an equity position in a George Church startup," Luis says. In Houston, it was investor zero in @Cemvita, which uses microbes to turn carbon and oil and gas waste into chemicals and fuels.
Those two bets are why Capital Factory now runs a dedicated life sciences practice. Luis's thesis is biomanufacturing, broadly defined. Strike zone is seed to Series A, and he'll talk to later-stage companies thinking about Texas.
His case for Texas:
- "We have a lot of electrons."
- "We know how to move molecules."
- "You're not launching rockets in California like we're launching rockets in Texas."
Luis knows what founders are up against because he has been one, and he built the science first. As a Harvard PhD in organic chemistry, he developed a method that was used to make the world's third best-selling AIDS drug. He co-founded a consulting firm, ran a chemistry lab, and then built @Trinity_U's entrepreneurship program, launching 60+ student startups that raised over $60M.
Right now, Luis is especially excited about:
- Biomanufacturing for national security. APIs, proteins, enzymes, vaccines, and chemicals. Capital Factory works closely with the @DeptofWar, and he says the signal on domestic biomanufacturing "outlasts the current administration."
- Biomanufacturing in space. "Bugs in space could be super cool."
- Molecules beyond proteins, peptides, and RNA, and expression platforms beyond E. coli and yeast.
- Agricultural biomanufacturing. "We also know how to grow" things in Texas.
- Bio-based chemicals and materials, like polymers and acetate, built alongside Houston's energy majors.
- California companies looking to scale in Texas.
He's looking to meet companies in all of these spaces at @SynBioBeta. If that's you, find him in San Jose, May 3-6th.
SynBioBeta retweeted
What if a warfighter could take a drug before entering a radiation zone, and walk out with their DNA intact?
Today, they can't. Radiation remains one of the few battlefield threats with no real biological countermeasure.
@alantomusiak is building one.
In 2027 he joins our Biosecurity and Biodefense segment at @SynBioBeta as founder and CEO of Permanence Bio.
The defense community wants this badly. The demand signal spans @BARDA, @DARPA, the @ENERGY Department, the @DeptofWar, and @NASA.
Radiation exposure is on the table for:
- Troops operating after a nuclear detonation or in contaminated terrain
- Responders at a failed nuclear power plant
- Fighter pilots at altitude
- Astronauts on long-duration missions
The gap is stark. Gastrointestinal acute radiation syndrome, where radiation wipes out the gut lining, has no approved therapy. None.
Radiation is Permanence's fastest-moving program, and it already has strong animal data. Alan's team is mining old U.S. government data sets to build new radiation countermeasures for warfighters and civilians. The compounds are small molecules that shield DNA and protect the immune system and gut lining from acute exposure.
The same platform opens a second front: protecting kidneys, salivary glands, and bone marrow in cancer patients getting radioligand therapy. The long game is stopping cancer before it starts.
Alan's route in: @Stanford undergrad. Screening work at @ArsenalBio. Investing at @age1vc. A PhD at the @BuckInstitute in @EricVerdin's lab, where he built IntrinClock, an epigenetic clock published in Communications Biology in 2024. Today Permanence operates out of @MBiolabs in San Francisco. Every step pointed at the same target: genome damage.
Biodefense talk usually centers on pathogens and AI. Radiation belongs in that conversation, and Alan is bringing it.
Come find him in San Jose, May 3-6th, alongside a growing roster of government and defense speakers in our newly minted Biosecurity and Biodefense segment.
SynBioBeta retweeted
Predicted structures for protein complexes from more than 2,800 viruses went into the AlphaFold Database last week, free for anyone to use.
The team ran 41,774 viral proteins through AlphaFold2, optimized with @nvidia BioNeMo, and generated about 1.7 million predicted pairings. Roughly 8,000 passed the quality bar for the curated database, and the full set of raw predictions was released as well. About 30% of the interactions added have never been documented before.
Viruses have been a real blind spot in structural biology. Many of them make one long polyprotein that gets cut into pieces, so it's hard to even tell from the genome where a protein starts and ends. Sorting that out took a big international group: @emblebi, @GoogleDeepMind, NVIDIA, @CEPIvaccines, @ISBSIB, @CVRinfo, Seoul National University and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), with complexes contributed by researchers at @LundUniversity.
What I like most is that it's open. When COVID hit, scientists had decades of coronavirus research to build on. For most of these viruses that groundwork didn't exist. Now a grad student anywhere in the world can pull these structures, and NVIDIA open-sourced the BioNeMo pipeline so labs can run their own targets.
NVIDIA has been part of this conversation at SynBioBeta for a while. Last year Anthony Costa, who wrote NVIDIA's post on this release, joined Barry Bunin on our AI and Drug Discovery breakout, moderated by Alison Snyder. Stacie Calad-Thomson, PhD spoke twice.
The first was a fireside chat with Clayton Rabideau and David Ewing Duncan on using AI to predict efficacy and toxicity earlier in drug discovery. The second was a session moderated by @ElliotHershberg on how cloud-scale compute is making biology programmable and iterative, closer to how software gets built. Kristopher Kersten, T.J. Chen and Divy Thakkar from Google DeepMind were with us too.
Congrats @JensenHuang , @sacdallago and the whole NVIDIA team, and to Joe Grove, Jo McEntyre and Risha Patel for making this happen.
SynBioBeta retweeted
7 people have already signed up to show their AI work at our Walnut Creek event on October 15, including builders from @genentech and @LangChain.
@SynBioBeta Presents Laptop and Learn: How People in Bio Use AI to Get Work Done
Thursday, Oct 15 | 5 to 8 PM | 1350 Treat Blvd, Walnut Creek
Free. Register here: luma.com/xioobrw7
The format: one-minute pitches to the room, then 15-minute demos around laptops. Three rounds. Laptops only. No slides.
Here's who is presenting so far:
- Michael Cunningham, @LangChain: Deep Life Sci, an open source assistant for biologists and clinical researchers. It searches millions of papers and clinical trial records, runs analyses in a sandbox, and builds the figures and data files.
- Stepan Tymoshenko, CTO of Talaria Biosciences: AI-designed protein libraries with up to five million NGS-verified variants in a single pool. His pitch: design, build, and test more genes in one experiment than Twist ships in a year.
- @erik_aznauryan, CEO of HarborSite: large enzyme screens plus protein language models to build new therapeutic gene insertion systems. HarborSite spun out of George Church's lab.
- Samira Nedungadi, Head of Engineering at @SecureBio: AI biosecurity evaluations and safeguards. Her team runs the evals behind SecureBio's pre-release model assessments.
- @gcarosso: open source tools for making better bets on biology. Conclave runs @claudeai, Codex, @GeminiApp , and @grok from one command line. SAROS tracks more than 10,000 clinical trial readouts.
- @dionmotion, founder of @MetaPages : open source AI artifacts. Build with any AI and keep control of your data and who sees it.
- William Ramos, @genentech: a target discovery platform with built-in safety assessment checks.
Bring a tool you use or one you built. Building something? Get real feedback from people who use this stuff every day. Learning? See what's working right now.
Want to demo? Say yes when you register.
Thanks to Jacob Thomas, @Acrisure, and @humaninteresthq for making it happen.
SynBioBeta retweeted
Excited to be invited to speak at SynBioBeta 2027! The 2nd time!
@SynBioBeta
Join me May 3-6 in San Jose, CA. Click here to join me: bit.ly/4d6uvQj #synbiobeta2027
