>FASTA_15

Prime Medicine dose, Synthego bankrupt, MeliBio acquired, Oxford Nanopore goes multiomic, and viruses secretly run the world + Techbros look to biotech, Blackmirror, and CRISPR real-life Mickey Mouse

>FASTA is a weekly newsletter sequencing the biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, and some biotech philosophy as dessert | Read in less than 5 min | Follow along on LinkedIn and X

#1 Prime Medicine dose

Last week, Prime Medicine announced their first patient dosed with a prime editing therapy against granulomatous disease, a dangerous condition that disables immune cells. The patient has experienced no serious side effects, and enzymatic function has been restored in two-thirds of his neutrophils¹.

But launching gene therapies to the market takes more than just science. For all the media coverage, Nobel and Breakthrough Prizes, there’s still only a handful of FDA approved gene-editing therapies today, most cost more than $1M USD per dose (excluding IMLYGIC, ADSTILADRIN, and VYJUVEK), and some have been discontinued due to alleged “limited interest” from patients and doctors anyway.

Prime Medicine’s former CEO is now being replaced by their former CFO. The company will focus on in-vivo therapies to avoid the costs of cell harvest, gene modification in GMP labs, expansion, quality control, reinfusion, and logistics that ex-vivo therapies entail.

Prime editing by Addgene

#2 Synthego’s bankruptcy

If gene editing companies are in trouble, you can only imagine how their suppliers are doing. Synthego was a “CRISPR solutions provider” specialized in the manufacturing of therapeutic and research-grade gRNAs. They estimate that at some point, ~25% of the ~1,000 global cell/gene therapy companies used their products.

This postmortem is not unlike other biotechs’: revenue growth between 2020 to 2023 and cost-cutting in the last year were not enough to catch up to their $100-500M in liabilities. After nearly a decade of operation and $400M of investment rounds — from Founders Fund, Jennifer Doudna, and the like — they filed for bankruptcy to be acquired by major biotech hedge fund Perceptive.

There is no logical reason why technologies like biomanufacturing and certainly gene therapies will not capture billions in value. Even beyond harsh economic environments, recent bankruptcies are a testament to the need for scalability breakthroughs and a good management team, in addition to the science — Time for the next wave.

I will be forever grateful to whoever made their guides. Synthego was a one-of-a-kind CRISPR teacher for the world.

#3 MeliBio acquired by FoodYoung Labs

Switching strands, our friends from MeliBio just got acquired by the Swiss food group FoodYoung Labs. The world’s first plant-based honey company developed a bee-free honey “Generation 1” technology, first commercialized it via the Mellody® brand to customers like 3-Michelin-Starred Eleven Madison Park, and recently scaled to sell to major retail partners such as Aldi.

It’s been a year since I interviewed Darko, CEO and cofounder of MeliBio on the Biofounders podcast. Perhaps the greatest lesson here is how crucial it was for him as a CEO to have worked in the honey industry before. Rather than going for the much-hyped precision fermentation approaches, the team focused on building a product people loved, and scaled it through manufacturing partners instead of building it in-house — Congrats guys!

Darko Mandich - Cofounder & CEO @MeliBio

#4 Oxford Nanopore goes multiomics