Pearl Bio yesterday announced that it has entered a collaboration with Merck, known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, to discover biologic therapies comprising non-standard amino acids for drug discovery. Such synthetic biology efforts are increasing, as it’s believed that expanding the genetic code could provide new…

The Allen Institute, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the University of Washington (UW) yesterday launched the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology, a collaboration that will build new technologies to record the history of cells over time. It will be led by UW Medicine researchers Jay Shendure, MD, PhD; Marion Pepper,…

Researchers at the University of Southern California, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Science have developed an innovative technique, called CReATiNG (Cloning Reprogramming and Assembling Tiled Natural Genomic DNA), that offers a simpler and more cost-effective approach to constructing synthetic chromosomes, potentially catapulting genetic engineering into a new era with…

Stanford researchers have developed a new synthetic molecule, called PIP-CpG, that combines a tumor-targeting agent with a molecule that triggers immune activation. This treatment, can be administered intravenously and can make its way to multiple tumor sites, where it recruits immune cells against cancer. Three doses of this new immunotherapy…

Content sponsored by Twist Bioscience is a cutting-edge synthetic biology company whose proprietary technology might be the real twist—a method of producing synthetic DNA by “writing” it on a silicon chip. Clinical OMICs Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson sat down with CEO Emily Leproust, Ph.D., an early pioneer in the high-throughput synthesis…

Synpromics says growing global demand has prompted the developer of gene control and synthetic promoter technology to relocate to expanded facilities in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company has moved into more than 5,000 square feet at the Roslin Innovation Centre, based at the University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Campus. Synpromics’ new…

With a bold new plan of recording complex biological information in living cells and genomes, over time, the Allen Institute, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), and the University of Washington (UW) announced the launch of the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology in December of last year. Their goal is to,…

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) announced today it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ambrx Biopharma, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with a proprietary synthetic biology platform, for $2 billion. Ambrx has been advancing its portfolio of next-generation antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) in a range of cancer indications. With the…

Sherlock Biosciences announced this week that it has raised $80 million in a Series B financing round to support its next-generation diagnostics, which are based on CRISPR and synthetic biology. Novalis LifeSciences led the round, which included new investors Illumina Ventures, Albany Capital, and Catalio Capital Management, among others. They…

It seems that two U.S.-based CRISPR research groups—one at U.C Berkeley and the other based at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard—are destined to go head to head well into the future. Yesterday, an all-star cast of researchers and biotech veterans including CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang, launched Sherlock Biosciences,…

EvolutionaryScale, an AI startup founded by x-Meta researchers, launched this week with its ESM3 platform for novel protein generation. ESM3 generated a new Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), a process the company says would take 500 million years of evolution to occur naturally. The company also announced a seed round of…

The first study to successfully use extracellular vesicles (EVs) to deliver cargo into T cells offers a solution to the gene- and cell-therapy delivery problem. The system the team used binds to target cells and effectively transfers drugs inside. Called GEMINI (Genetically Encoded Multifunctional Integrated Nanovesicles), the new platform comprises…

In a novel approach for improving the efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy against solid tumors, engineers from Columbia University have engineered another living system to do that job—the bacteria that often flock to the hostile tumor environment where they thrive.  In work published in Science, the…

Three therapeutic regulatory approvals in less than a year signal that the promise of the human microbiome may finally be paying off. All of the approved therapies focus on treating recurrent Clostridium difficile infection, but what is next for the field? With promising oncology-related trial results from a number of…

An engineered probiotic could be one answer to treating autoimmunity in the brain in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, suggests research led by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University. “Engineered probiotics could revolutionize the way we treat chronic diseases,” said lead investigator Francisco Quintana, a professor at Harvard and a…