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Differential bio's virtual bioprocess simulator, Arsenale Bioyards' PICCOLO bioreactors patent, Novo Nordisk’s SIBR CRISPR toolkit, Isomorphic labs' raise, Indigenous Bioeconomy, Nucleate AI hackathon
Differential Bio out of stealth with $2.2 million pre-seed
Enter the virtual bioprocess simulator: you adjust different cultivation parameters for your strain of interest, get accurate predictions for your key performance indicators and select the best optimization parameters. In just 4 weeks, before you waste any unnecessary wetlab bucks and time, Differential has helped you reduce your bioprocess costs by up to 3x and increase titer by up to 80%.
You can either use your own wetlab, or seamlessly gather experimental data through their self-driving lab with full IP protection to optimize parameters in your media, strain selection, cell metabolism, post-freezing survival, and shelf stability of your end product.
Arsenale Bioyards raises €9.5 million
Their precision fermentation platform uses a bench-scale high system of ‘Piccolo’ bioreactors to conduct high throughput experiments. They translate these results into industrial (*10^6) scale to make predictions using AI, and finally test out performance in their 6 x 50,000 L bioreactors yard.
PICCOLO comprises a sensor suite (121, 123) that autonomously move across the arrays to perform real-time, in situ measurements without manual intervention or external plate readers. Its five-bottle system (105) controls gas, waste, auxiliary reagents, media, and seed cultures, automating feeding, sampling, and waste removal without external robotic arms.
The system supports multiple bioreactor boards (111) that house 64 bioreactor each. Each board collects temperature, optical density, dissolved oxygen, and spectrometric data and sends it to the microfluidic valves (215 a-c) through an electronic PCB (210) to regulate media feed, oxygen delivery, waste removal, and magnetic or mechanical stirrers (241) in each individual bioreactor (201).
Their CEO, Massimo Portincaso, is a former BCG Partner and MD who exited Officinae Bio; CSO Gordana Djordjevic brings 25+ years of scientific leadership at Perfect Day, Zymergen, Synthetic Genomics, BP and BASF; while their CTO, Niels Lynge Agerbæk, is a former VP at Zymergen, GM at Xellia Pharmaceuticals US, and Director at Novo Nordisk.
Novo Nordisk’s new CRISPR toolkit for Cupriavidus necator
SIBR-Cas (Self-Splicing Intron-Based Riboswitch-Cas) delays CRISPR-Cas activity such that genome integration of donor DNA can occur before a Cas enzyme cleaves the remaining wild-type sequences, serving as a counterselection to eliminate unedited cells.
In the absence of the ligand (theophylline), the intron remains unspliced in the mRNA, preventing production of a functional Cas protein. Addition of theophylline, triggers the intron (aptazyme) to excise itself from the mRNA, allowing translation of Cas.
SIBR2.0 reduces leakiness by splitting the gene of interest in two exons, ensuring that no functional Cas is produced unless the intron is precisely removed, and allowing for the addition of exons from different genes. It achieved controlled expression of Cas12a at ~70% editing efficiency within 48 h after electroporation.
This study was conducted at Novo Nordisk’s Foundation Center for Biosustainability (DTU Biosustain) in collaboration with a global team of scientists from Wageningen University & Research, University of Oxford, Max Planck Institute, the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Isomorphic labs raises $600M
The technology they co-developed with Deepmind, AlphaFold 3, can generate highly accurate 3D structural predictions for proteins, DNA, RNA, ligands and how they interact. Akin to image generation models, it does this by a combined use of neural networks and transformer-based attention mechanisms that interpret multiple sequence alignments and pairwise amino-acid relationships.
In partnership with Eli Lilly and Novartis, Isomorphic will scale and progress drug candidate pipelines and internal programs focused on oncology and immunology — Ironic other pharma companies claim that AlphaFold is running out of data and they’ll develop their own models?
Indigenous bioeconomy
40% of today’s commercial drugs derive from plants and Traditional Medicine. While life-saving, QS-21 (a vaccine adjuvant) is an example of reliance on laborious extraction from Quillaja saponaria trees in South America, leading to ecological damage, shortages, and rising costs.
In this article, my friend Maria Astolfi et. al go over different frameworks to close the gap between the value generated and captured, by biotech companies and indigenous people. Understanding that biodiversity stewardship can turn into economic value and viceversa could benefit all parties in a truly circular bioeconomy.
While challenges like the lack of Indigenous-led verification mechanisms remain, some biotechs are already taking action. Variant Bio has committed to benefit-sharing 4% of revenue plus 4% of equity value with partner communities that have shared their DNA and health information, and BaseCamp Research has partnered with the government of Cameroon to ensure that revenues from AI-driven discoveries are allocated through royalties.
Nucleate’s 2025 AI bio hackathon
Last year’s challenges ranged from predictive models for drug efficacy and safety, to enhancing MS/MS fragmentation predictions for a chance to win $10,000 from Enveda, and thousands of dollars in prizes (aws, LatchBio, OpenAI credits, tickets to Synbiobeta, and glowing plants!). Anyone anywhere can participate, so sign up to stay in the loop.